Memories From Books

Glorious Exploits

2026-02-23T18:56:00.000-05:00

Title: Glorious Exploits

Author: Ferdia Lennon

Publication Information: Henry Hold and Co. 2024. 304 pages.

ISBN: 1250893690 / 978-1250893697

Rating: ★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "So Gelon says to me, 'Let's go down and feed the Athenians.'"

Favorite Quote: "Anything is possible, and it always has been. For the world was once just a dream in a god's eye, and the man who gives up on himself makes the very same god look away."

Glorious Exploits is an interesting combination. From the book descriptions, the book is billed as a "celebration of that which binds humanity" set "on the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War" told in "a contemporary Irish voice" as an "ode to the power of art in a time of war" and is "as riotously funny as it is deeply moving."

The plot goes as follows. The Syracusans are victors of a battle. The Athenians are the losers. The victors have gathered the losers as prisoners into an open air prison of a rock quarry. Two potters who are unemployed and looking for merriment offer the prisoners food if they can recite lines from Euripides. Their plan grows from that into putting on a production of Medea from Greek mythology. After all, it's all in good fun except that things take a much darker turn as the opening day gets closer.

Unfortunately, for me, I am completely not the reader for this book. I cannot get past the opening descriptions of this prison and the starving, dying prisoners. The idea of someone then using them for sport makes it worse. The thought of food and the possibility of fending of starvation as the "incentive" is horrifying. "The extra bit of food we're giving them has started to take effect. A stranger could tell which Athenians are the actors by the fullness of their cheeks, the straightness of their backs. As our cast fill out, the other prisoners wither all the more."

Two much real history of such prisons and such atrocity exists. Two much is happening today in the world that resembles this open air prison and the starvation of a population. To turn that into a comic story is not funny, at least not to me.

I love historical fiction because it introduces me to history I may not otherwise learn. The history of this book dates from about 415 BC and the Athenian attempted invasion of the Syracuse. The Athenians were defeated and suffered great losses. The remains of the Athenian forces were executed, sold into slavery, or let to starve in quarries. Unfortunately, that is not the history that will remain with me from this book. Rather, it will be the vision of theater in the midst of this horror. The ending does offer some redemption to this vision. However, it is much too late for me.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Expiration Dates

2026-01-25T17:29:00.000-05:00

Title: Expiration Dates

Author: Rebecca Serle

Publication Information: Atria Books. 2024. 272 pages.

ISBN: 1982166827 / 978-1982166823

Rating: ★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "The paper is blank save for the name: Jake."

Favorite Quote: "Life is a catch-22 ... That's why God invented female friendship."

Relationships can be hard. Relationship take work. Relationships are full of uncertainty. I think this is something most people would agree on. So many people make a commitment and invest in a relationship for a lifetime. However, what if at the very start of a relationship, you knew exactly to the year, month, and day how long it was going to last? Would you invest as much? Would you work and try as hard? Would that knowledge add a certainty to the relationship or would it simply create a self-fulfilling prophecy?

These are the questions at the heart of this story. Every relationship Daphne Bell has ever had has come with an expiration date. When she meets a new man, she mysteriously also gets a slip of paper with the man's name and the amount of time the relationship will last. With that knowledge, Daphne never lets herself fully invest in the relationship because she knows a breakup is coming. "If you never stop long enough to sink into something, then it can't destroy you. It's easier to climb out of a pool than a well, is the thing." Again, the question arises. Is the knowledge the certainty or does belief in the knowledge create the inevitability of the breakup? Is the conclusion predetermined or does Daphne's belief and ensuing actions create the conclusion?

Then, along comes Jake. For Jake, Daphne receives the paper, but, this time, the paper has just a name with no timeframe. Does that mean forever or a lifetime or something else? For the first time in her life, Daphne approaches a relationship with no known end in sight. Again, the question arises. Does the lack of a date mean forever or does Daphne allow for and create the potential because she believes it to be possible?

The book is partly a sweet love story. If you choose to believe, the book is about the magic of the slips of papers. The book, of course, is about relationships - both long and short ones - and their potential to change the direction of our lives. However, more so, the book leaves me thinking about how much of life is predestined versus how much is driven by our choices; and how much our choices are influenced by our beliefs about ourselves and about the world around us.

If you had the choice, would you want to know the ending? For my life, I would not. I choose to be present now.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

After Annie

2026-01-04T18:26:00.001-05:00

Title: After Annie

Author: Anna Quindlen

Publication Information: Random House. 2024. 304 pages.

ISBN: 0593229800 / 978-0593229804

Rating: ★★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "Annie Brown died right before dinner."

Favorite Quote: "You need to let them know that sadness shouldn't lead to silence. You need to find a way to do that every day."

This book grapples with the incredible challenge of dealing with the death of a loved one. It deals with the even bigger challenge when that death is sudden and unexpected. Not that you ever expect death. Not even when everything indicates death is coming are you ever actually prepared for the finality of it.

Annie Brown is the glue that holds her family and her friends together. Her husband, her children, and her best friend all rely on her. Then, one day, Annie suddenly dies of a brain aneurysm. There are, of course, the logistics to deal with - the hospital, the funeral, the condolences, and more. There is also life to deal with because life goes on. Days rise and end. School, meals, jobs, and the myriad details of day to day life. Within the logistics of it all is the emotion and the grief.

Annie's husband Bill is lost and overwhelmed. Annie's children are thrust out of their childhood in dealing with things no child should have to deal with. Some of the burden of care falls to the oldest Ali as she tries to step into the caretaker role for her younger siblings and, to some extent, her father. Annemarie, who loses her best friend, deals with anchoring herself and caring for herself in the way that Annie did while trying simultaneously to care for Annie's family.

The story travels through the year after Annie's death - a year of firsts - and the emergence of life ... after Annie. The story is one of grief and its power to change us. It is a story of grief as it traverses memories of a lifetime through the different narrators of the story. This is, however, also a story of hope and of the potential for joy even after such an unfathomable loss.

As with other Anna Quindlen books, this book brings to life ordinary people - people readers can relate to - in a situation that all us hope to never have to face. Also like the author's other books, this story is slow and quiet. It starts with a shocking event but then quietly weaves its way through grief. In a way, that slow pace works for this story for grief lasts a lifetime with steps forward and backwards. In this, the book rings true. This is a story that resonates and lingers in its voice longer after I finish the book.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

A Most Puzzling Murder

2025-11-11T21:08:00.004-05:00

Title: A Most Puzzling Murder: A quirky, humorous locked room murder mystery with riddles and puzzles for the reader to solve

Author: Bianca Marais

Publication Information: MIRA. 2025. 480 pages.

ISBN: 0778368602 / 9780778368601

Rating: ★★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley and a publisher's blog tourfree of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "Destiny Whip warily eyes her bedside table, thinking how it could easily be mistaken for a miniature graveyard, what with all the little pills neatly lined in staggered rows, positioned upright like tiny headstones."

Favorite Quote: "She wonders why finding your way to your truest self, and then fully embracing and accepting it, is always the most difficult journey of all."

*** BLOG TOUR *

Review

The subtitle of this book reads, "A quirky, humorous locked room murder mystery with riddles and puzzles for the reader to solve." All things I love - quirkiness, humor, mystery, riddles, and puzzles. Add to that a reclusive, genius main character named Destiny Whip. Add to that a mysterious letter and an atmospheric remote island in a nebulous geographic location but with a family castle. This book has all the makings of a fun adventure.

This book reminds me of the children's books in which you "choose your own adventure." In fact, the reader's introduction to the book references that it is a choose your own adventure book. The fun of these books is their interactive nature and the choice - the thought that as the reader, you are perhaps driving the story. In reality, you know that all the eventualities have already been created by the author. Yet, that feeling of being in control of the story impacts the experience. Eventually, I go back and read all the possible combinations - all the choices. This adds the element of more choices and do overs - something many of us would wish for in real life.

Given that some of the puzzles involve graphics, I am not sure how different formats for the book would work. The author's website provides a PDF of the puzzle, but have to do that would interrupt the flow of the book. I am not sure how an audiobook would even work especially to follow the different threats out of the puzzles. That being said, the Kindle version worked fine, linking back and forth between puzzle, solution, outcome, next chapter. It was fun. That being said, I am not sure the answers to any of the individual puzzles really impacted the outcome of the book at all. It goes back to the reality that the author has already created all the possibilities. Nevertheless, it was fun to travel along and a nostalgic nod to my childhood reads.

I have now read three books by the author, and each has been completely different. Hum if You Don't Know the Words was about the harsh reality of life in South Africa. The Witches of Moonshyne Manor is about five octogenarian witches whose lives and home is threatened. This one is about mystery and adventure. Each book features strong female characters but in completely different settings and situations. I look forward to seeing where Bianca Marais goes next.

About the Book

Interspersed with riddles and puzzles that both Destiny and the reader must solve, A Most Puzzling Murder is a one-of-a-kind mystery that will leave you guessing and gasping until the very last page!

Destiny Whip is a former child prodigy, world-renowned enigmatologist and very, very alone. A life filled with loss has made her a recluse, an existence she’s content to endure until a letter arrives inviting her to interview for the position of Scruffmore family historian. Not only does an internet search for the name yield almost nothing, it’s a role she never applied to in the first place!

She decodes the invitation's hidden message with ease, and its promise to reveal her family secrets proves too powerful a draw for the orphaned Destiny, who soon finds herself on Eerie Island. It’s a place whose inhabitants are almost as inhospitable as the tempestuous weather. The Scruffmores themselves turn out to be not much better, a snarled mess of secrets and motives connected by their mistrust for one another.

Their newly arrived guest proves to be just as much an enigma to them as they are to her. While Destiny slowly works to unravel the mysteries hidden throughout the ominous castle, she struggles to interpret disturbing nightly visions of what is to come. In the midst of cryptic ciphers, hidden passages, and the family’s magical line of succession, Destiny is certain of two things: one of the Scruffmores is going to die and she’s running out of time to stop it.

About the Author

BIANCA MARAIS cohosts the popular podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, which is aimed at helping emerging writers get published. She teaches creative writing through the podcast and was named a winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award for Creative Writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She lives in Toronto, where she loves playing escape-room games and writing about strong female protagonists.

Excerpt

Excerpted from A Most Puzzling Murder by Bianca Marais, Copyright © 2025 by Bianca Marais. Published by MIRA Books.

CHAPTER 1
Destiny
Sunday, 9:57 a.m.

Destiny Whip warily eyes her bedside table, thinking how it could easily be mistaken for a miniature graveyard, what with all the little pills neatly lined in staggered rows, positioned upright like tiny headstones. It certainly feels as though she’s regarding the burial ground of her hopes and dreams, haunted by the specter of the enormous potential she’s so dismally failed to live up to.

When you’re declared a child prodigy, everyone expects you to go far in life, but all Destiny has managed today is a slow shuffle to and from the bathroom. Even that required Herculean reserves of energy.

Balancing her laptop on her knees, she reaches to the farthest side of the bed for her emotional-support urn, pulling it close and tucking it into her armpit as though cuddling a teddy bear. She kisses the top of the teardrop shape, the metal cold against her chapped lips.

Bex appears in Destiny’s doorway, leaning her head against the frame. “Good morning.”

Her best friend is still too scrawny, but not nearly as emaciated as she was a year ago when all she feasted on was beauty magazines and models’ Instagram pages rather than anything resembling food. Bex looks mostly healthy again, her long chestnut hair gleaming, the hollows of her cheeks no longer reminiscent of sinkholes.

“You okay?” Bex asks, the corners of her mouth turned down.

It’s the anniversary of the accident today, one year somehow crawling by on scraped knees.

Some people act like severe depression is a tarnish, one that can be polished off with the application of enough elbow grease. Luckily, Bex isn’t one of them.

Destiny tries to speak, but a knot of regret is so tangled up in her throat that the words don’t stand a chance.

Her laptop suddenly squawks with an incoming video call. In the months that Destiny has been seeing Dr. Shepherd, they’ve never once had a virtual consultation over a weekend. But today is going to be a tough one, which is why the psychiatrist insisted on the appointment.

As the ringing continues, Destiny gently places the urn beside her and instinctively reaches for her notebook before paging to the list of tasks the doctor assigned last month.

Bex sidles up next to her, reading over her shoulder.

1. Leave the apartment once a day to go for a walk or grab a coffee.

2. Reach out to an old friend or colleague to suggest a meetup.

3. Replace all the dead plants.

4. Keep a dream journal about the white-haired ghost woman.

5. Email the council expressing your wish to return.

6. Accept one of the consultancies that you’ve been offered (one that doesn’t require travel).

7. Work on forgiving Nate.

8. Limit your interactions with Bex.

Bex side-eyes the last item on the list. “Rude,” she huffs. “You’d think I was a bad inf luence or something.”

Rather than answering Bex or the incoming call, Destiny thinks of how she’s never f lunked an assignment in her entire life. Always top of her class, and despite being admitted to university as a twelve-year-old, Destiny cannot fathom this degree of failure.

She’s ticked nothing off the list, not even throwing away the plants whose shriveled corpses goad her, their untimely deaths undoubtedly due to the curtains constantly being drawn tight. That, and Destiny forgetting to water them.

The laptop’s ringing grates on Destiny’s nerves, but she can’t force herself to answer and face Dr. Shepherd’s disappointment. It will be carefully concealed, of course, with the psychiatrist gently pointing out there’s always next week, or the week after that, to achieve these seemingly simple goals. But it doesn’t matter how much of an extension Destiny is given.

It’s no use.

For how can she possibly cut ties with Bex, who’s her dearest, not to mention only, friend?

Plus, there’s no way the Council of Enigmatologists will take her back after she’s been AWOL for so long. Each time an envelope drops through the mail slot, Destiny fully expects it to be a letter informing her that they’ve completely revoked her membership. It hurts to remember how thrilled she was to be appointed president of the prestigious group just thirteen months ago, and how she, Bex, and Nate all splurged on a fancy dinner to celebrate.

When the call finally drops, Bex exhales, a long whoosh of defeat. “I know I shouldn’t enable you with all the talking, but it’s not like I can call anyone on your behalf.”

They both look down at the wallpaper on the home screen of Destiny’s laptop.

It’s a photo that was taken thirteen years ago when Destiny was eight. In it, her mother’s arm is f lung across Annie’s shoulders, happiness radiating from the two best friends in waves. Destiny’s eyes fill with tears as she studies her mother’s straight black hair and pale skin, and those enormous glasses obscuring most of her face.

Jutting her chin at Destiny’s mother, Bex murmurs, “I wish I’d known Liz.”

Destiny nods before turning her attention to Annie, with her striking Afro and beaded shoulder-duster earrings, and her smile as bright as the sun.

The image was captured two weeks before Liz died. A year later, the paperwork went through to officially make Annie Destiny’s second adoptive mother. Their deaths were a wrenching loss, a tearing in the fabric of Destiny’s being that she never quite stitched back together.

There were times in the before when Destiny experienced the sting of loneliness, that awful yearning of the one forever stuck outside, nose and palms pressed against the cold glass, gazing in at what belonging looked like: foreheads bent together, raucous laughter elicited by inside jokes, sentences finished by those who knew you best.

But this is not loneliness, in the same way that a drop of water is not a deluge, the way a sigh is not a hurricane.

“I’m so sorry that you’re having such a rough time of it,” Bex says, reaching out to tuck a f laming red curl behind Destiny’s ear. She freezes upon seeing Destiny’s expression, her hand hovering like a ghost between them. “A year is a long time, though, and Dr. Shepherd is right despite the fact that she clearly has it in for me. You need to move on.”

God, that Bex is apologizing to her, of all people, when everything that happened was Destiny’s fault.

“No, I’m sorry,” Destiny says, her voice pulled so taut that it snaps. Seeing the pills all standing to attention—no longer a cemetery full of headstones, but rather an army ready to fight the last battle—Destiny reaches for the urn again, stroking it like a security blanket. “If you stop talking to me, Bex, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Not gonna happen,” Bex replies breezily. And then more firmly she says, “Okay, it’s tough love time. You seriously need to shower because you’re stinking up the place. Plus, the kitchen needs cleaning. Those take-out containers have grown thumbs. I swear I caught them trying to hitch a ride to the nearest primordial swamp.”

Destiny laughs at how incredibly bossy Bex is.

Especially for a dead person.

Still, it’s reassuring that no matter how much has changed, some things stay exactly the same.

Buy Links

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Most-Puzzling-Murder-humorous-mystery/dp/0778387690
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-most-puzzling-murder-bianca-marais/1146847363
Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-most-peculiar-tale-indeed-original-bianca-marais/21435438
Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/9780778368601
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/a-most-puzzling-murder
AppleBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/a-most-puzzling-murder/id6501987778
Google Play: https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Most_Puzzling_Murder.html?id=rbs7EQAAQBAJ
Libro.FM: https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781488233814-a-most-puzzling-murder
Indigo: https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/a-most-puzzling-murder-a-quirky-humorous-locked-room-murder-mystery-with-riddles-and-puzzles-for-the-reader-to-solve/9780778368601.html
Target: https://www.target.com/p/a-most-puzzling-murder-by-bianca-marais/-/A-93112360
Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/A-Most-Puzzling-Murder-A-Quirky-Humorous-Locked-Room-Murder-Mystery-with-Riddles-and-Puzzles-for-the-Reader-to-Solve-Paperback-9780778368601/5560832578?classType=REGULAR&from=/search

Social Links

Author website: https://www.biancamarais.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/biancamaraisauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/biancam_author/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biancamarais_author/

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The American Daughters

2025-11-04T19:56:00.001-05:00

Title: The American Daughters

Author: Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Publication Information: One World. 2024. 304 pages.

ISBN: 0593729390 / 978-0593729397

Rating: ★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "... in grasping my pen and putting my hand to page, I felt as though I existed for the first time."

Favorite Quote: "I was the property of no one save myself. Therefore, I could freely give of myself to those I loved, no?"

The title reminds me of the organization Daughters of the American Revolution. I am not sure the author intended for the connection to be made, but nevertheless it comes to my mind. Much has been written and researched about the Daughters of the American Revolution. The group is still active. The only qualification is to be able to trace lineage back to the patriots of the American Revolution.

The American Daughters of this book are similar in a fight for freedom. They are the revolutionaries rather than descendants of revolutionaries. Other than a similarity in name, they couldn't otherwise be more different. The book is based on a history of resistance amongst slaved and free women of color in pre-Civil War New Orleans. The book puts forth a secret group of spies with a character at the heart of it who was the author's ancestor.

One of the reasons I love historical fiction is that it introduces me to history I may not otherwise have learned or read about. However, when I go to research this history, very little is to be found. Basic research states that no such organization existed. So, this fiction may be taking the actual passive and active acts of resistance and put them into this fictional context. I won't say embellishing history because the resistance was and is real. However, perhaps, it is history with more of an artistic license that other historical fiction may take.

In that, this book is a great reminder that historical fiction is fiction first. It is important to not take it as history but to do your own research to separate fact from fiction.

History aside, the story is an interesting one with one main repeating theme. The phrases "slave labor camp also called a plantation" and "open-air prison also called a plantation" and other similar monikers repeat throughout the book. The vision is a brutal one and perhaps more true to the history than anything else in the book. However, the repetition of the entire phrase over and over again becomes somewhat stilted.

This is what I will remember from this book, more than the characters or even the plot. Perhaps, that is the intent successfully accomplished. Unfortunately, it makes the reading of the book challenging at times. I am reminded of the elementary school reminder of "show don't tell" in a story. This story does show as well, but the "tell" repeats as a refrain overshadowing everything else.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Supercommunicators

2025-10-25T16:41:00.001-04:00

Title: Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

Author: Charles Duhigg

Publication Information: Random House. 2024. 320 pages.

ISBN: 0593243919 / 978-0593243916

Rating: ★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "If there was one thing everyone knew about Felix Signal, it was that he was easy to talk to."

Favorite Quote: "... listening means letting someone else tell their story and then, even if you don't agree with them, trying to understand why they feel that way."

Reading a book on communication is a double edged sword. On the one hand, many of us read and receive training on the topic - in school, on the job, through self-education, and through experience. Thus, reading another book about the ideas can sometimes feel like it rehashes the same thoughts and skills. On the other hand, our modes of communication may have changed, but human nature has not. Individual needs to be heard and understood remain constant. As such, even though the concepts of such a book may not be new, reading another's interpretation of it and another packaging of it can sometimes teach me something new - a new way of looking at the same thing. For that nugget of truth, a book such as this proves its value.

This book is structured around three kinds of conversations:

"What's this really about conversation?"
How do we feel conversation?"
Who are we conversation?"

The first may be practical. The second is emotional. The third is about identity. The concern with this structure is that is any conversation truly about only one of these facets or is it always a mix of all three? Likely the latter. However, perhaps, it can be understood that the primary focus of the conversation may just be one.

The book set out four conversation rules:

Rule one: Pay attention to what kind of conversation is occurring.
Rule two: Share your goals, and ask what others are seeking.
Rule three: Ask about others' feelings, and share your own.
Rule four: Explore if identities are important to this discussion.

Again, the ideas are not new. Think listening triangle. Think Stephen Covey's "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." Think about many other books and articles that have been written about this topic.

Beyond the ideas are the stories the author uses to anchor the framework to situations. As may be expected, some I relate to. Some I do not.

What I love best about this book is actually captured in its subtitle. Communication is about connection. Particularly, as communication shifts to media that are remote and electronic, connection remains at the heart of it. That reminder is the lesson I will take.

As with other books such as this, I will take what works for me and leave the rest. Your value will vary based on what you bring to it.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Book of Doors

2025-10-21T21:04:00.002-04:00

Title: The Book of Doors

Author: Gareth Brown

Publication Information: William Morrow. 2024. 416 pages.

ISBN: 0063323982 / 978-0063323988

Rating: ★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "In Kellner Books on the Upper East Side of New York City, a few minutes before his death, John Webber was reading The Count of Monte Cristo."

Favorite Quote: "Happiness is not something you sit and wait for. you have to choose it and pursue it in spite of everything else. It's not going to be given to you."

A bookstore. A librarian. A magical book. Those who, at first, do not understand the power of the books. Those who wish to use the magic of the books for their own purposes. A main characters whose life seems to be passing by. "Don't waste your life hidden away in your own mind. Make the most of the time you have, otherwise before you know it, you'll have no time left." Until now.

This book has a setup that has been done before. This book has so many characteristics that appeal to a bibliophile reader. I love books about books and am predisposed to picking a book with a description such as this one. Add to that the intriguing promise of this magical book. "any door is every door. You just need to know how to open them." The story then goes even further with the idea that there is not just one book but a whole series of them. Each one grants its owner a special ability, and yet, this one surpasses them all. I open the door to this book and walk right in.

Cassie Andrews lives a quiet, humdrum life. She is a bookseller in a local shop. She shares an apartment with her friend Izzy. Then, a customer - one of Cassie's favorites - dies in the shop. He leaves behind a book. Not just any book. A magical book. At first, the book is a joy - the ability to open a door or reopen a door considered forever lost in our lives is an appealing one. However, doing so comes at a price.

Cassie and Izzy are thrown into the world of intrigue and are now in the sights of those who want this book. As this is an old conflict, there are sides. Drummond Fox appears as a librarian, educating Cassie on the provenance of the book and what happens if it falls into the wrong hands.

There are skirmishes, adventures, and escapes as Cassie attempts to keep the book safe. I go right along, enjoying the ride. That being said, be warned that the ride gets violent at times, and at times, I feel like I have been on this ride before. Magical book, time travel, good guys, bad guys, and so on. I nevertheless love the premise.

The Book of Doors is a debut novel. I look forward to seeing what the author does next.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

2025-10-13T19:27:00.001-04:00

Title: The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Author & Illustrator: Amy Tan

Publication Information: Knopf. 2024. 320 pages.

ISBN: 0593536134 / 978-0593536131

Rating: ★★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "These pages are a record of my obsession with birds."

Favorite Quote: "For birds, each day is a chance to survive."

Amy Tan is an award winning author. This book is a departure from her prior work. From the author's website... "In 2016, Amy began taking nature journaling classes with John Muir Laws. During the pandemic shutdown, she spent long hours observing the behavior of wild birds in her backyard. Her editor, Dan Halpern, suggested she turn those pencil sketches, colored portraits and journal notes into an illustrated book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, published in April 2024 by Knopf."

From interviews with the author about why this project came about when it did: Amy Tan is of Chinese American heritage, born to immigrant parents. In her words, in 2016, racism in our nation was rampant, and she was the target of that racism because of her heritage. "The world was ugly, and I needed to find beauty again."

The idea of nature providing beauty, comfort, and solace is one that resonates with me. Although I am not a birder per se, the idea of retreating into nature for calm and peace resonates with me. The lesson and reminder to us to be good stewards of our world resonates with me.

For me, long walks and discovery of all our local parks became a survival mechanism during the pandemic. The author's birding adventures continued during the pandemic. That being said, she has the luxury of a home in the San Francisco hills with a view of the bay, a large garden, a wall of windows, and the means to create a green roof. That is not most people's reality, but it is a lovely reality to share.

As the title suggests, this book - the words and the images - are all about birds. If that is not your thing, you may not be the reader for this book. The book is structured into short, date and time stamped entries, each focused on a particular sighting.

The goal of this book is not to relate the descriptions and illustrations to humans. It is not to anthropomorphize the birds. Nevertheless, the journal entries do ponder bird behavior - the adult birds and the caretaking of young, the competition amongst like birds and between species, the impact of environmental changes on the lives of birds, the communal reaction to a bird in distress, the lifecycle of birds, and so much more. Each one of these ideas has relevance to the human world.

Of course, fiction or nonfiction, Amy Tan's writing and her ability to draw me into this world of birds and keep turning pages makes this a memorable book.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Acts of Forgiveness

2025-10-01T19:53:00.001-04:00

Title: Acts of Forgiveness

Author: Maura Cheeks

Publication Information: Ballantine Books. 2024. 320 pages.

ISBN: 0593598296 / 978-0593598290

Rating: ★★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "Marcus Revel was willing to trade the illusion of his sanity to keep his home."

Favorite Quote: "Because sometimes you have to go where you're not wanted in order to change people's minds."

Philadelphia - the original capital of our nation.

Change has come. A woman serves as the United States president. The Forgiveness Act is being considered. If passed and signed. If signed, the legislation would provide up to $175,000 in reparations is a family can prove that they are descended from slaves. The nation is watching.

The author anchors this discussion in the life of Willa Revel. Long ago, she gave up a career to help the family business. She is a single parent to a daughter. She has always put her family before herself. "It was one thing to feel like your sacrifices were worth it but another to feel like you sacrificed for nothing. Was it possible to be a good person if you were always resenting the sacrifices you made to be good." The passage of the act would mean acknowledgement. The money could mean staying out of bankruptcy.

The questions this book raises are important ones that go well beyond this book:

Can reparations ever compensate for the horrors of slavery?
Is the thought of reparations merely to assuage the guilt of those who consider themselves representative of the enslavers?
Can trauma inherited through the generations be remedied by monetary reparations?
From a pieces of legislation called the "Forgiveness" Act, is forgiveness possible?
What does forgiveness means?
How do you put a value on the loss?
How do you prove a family line?
How do you prove a family line when

people were bought and sold?
birth records were not kept?
a child's birth was recorded as property rather than parental lineage?
ownership rights extended into rape and fathering of unacknowledged children?

And so many more.

What grounds this book and makes it work for me is that it is not a philosophical essay on these topics. In fact, many of these questions are not and, I don't think, can be resolved in a book such as this. To me, a packaged fictional resolution would undermine the questions.

Instead, this is very much the story of one woman and one family. It is about a search for the past and the complicated history it reveals. It is about learning where we come from and separating it from where we are going. It is about understanding. The questions and the search will stay with me for a long time.

This book is a debut novel. I look forward to reading more from the author.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Phoenix Crown

2025-09-22T20:28:00.000-04:00

Title: The Phoenix Crown

Author: Kate Quinn & Janie Chang

Publication Information: William Morrow Paperbacks. 2024. 400 pages.

ISBN: 0063304732 / 978-0063304734

Rating: ★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "'A rose by any other name,' someone quote, and Alice Eastwood was hard-pressed not to roll her eyes."

Favorite Quote: "Well, maybe she was tired of being good. Maybe she wanted to play the game for once, and play it for all she could get."

On Wednesday, April 18, 1906, Northern California including the San Francisco bay area was hit by a 7.9 magnitude earthquake. In the aftermath of the earthquake, massive fires broke out all over the city and lasted for days. Over eighty percent of the city was destroyed, and over 3,000 people died.

This story begins about 2 weeks before the earthquake.

Four women:

Suling - a young woman in the city's Chinatown trying to avoid a forced marriage.
Gemma - an opera singer looking for her friend and a new start.
Nelli - Gemma's friend who seems to have disappeared.
Alice Eastwood - a botanist. This character is based on an actual historical figure. The real Alice Eastwood was a botanist and is credited with saving part of the plant collection of the California Academy of Sciences during the 1906 earthquake and the ensuing fires. Nothing much survived beyond what she saved.

One man - Henry Thornton.

One legendary artifact - The Phoenix Crown, an antique from Beijing's summer palace. The phoenix crown actually are called fengguan, and they historically are "hats" or crowns worn by Chinese brides and noblewomen.

These lives meet and intersect. Plans are made. Alliances are forged. Betrayals happen. There is an incidental love story. It seems there for the sake of being there, not central to the main story of the book.

Then, the earthquake happens, and Henry Thornton disappears along with the crowns.

Five years later, in 1911, the crown reappears. The mystery and the dresire for revenge, retribution, and more brings these characters to a finale crash.

The story introduces each characters and their backstory. It takes a while for the connections to form and for the reader to see the threads come together. The historical setting - the city before, during, and after the earthquake - really comes to life. I can "see" it and feel as though I am walking those streets.

This book is part historical fiction and part thriller and mystery. The history give the book its vivid color. The female characters draw attention to the challenges faced by women at that time and in that place. The mystery and the chase give the book its pace. The pace definitely picks up more later in the book as the story fast forwards five years.

Overall, a fun read. This is my first book by these authors. I will likely look for more.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Redwood Court

2025-09-15T21:27:00.000-04:00

Title: Redwood Court

Author: Délana R. A. Dameron

Publication Information: The Dial Press. 2024. 304 pages.

ISBN: 0593447026 / 978-0593447024

Rating: ★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "My grandpa Teeta says I am the second and last daughter of Rhina, who is the only daughter of Weesie, who was the first daughter of Lady, who is the secret daughter of Big Sis, who was born to Sarah, who came from Esra, the adopted daughter of Ruth (who adopted her because Esra was a salve and was sold without her mama, but the story was Esra's mama had thirteen children depending on who asked and depending on if you counted those unborn or born dead)"

Favorite Quote: "... the future and the joy and risk and pain are worth it if our generation experience a greater freedom than we're allotted."

Redwood Court is a story of a time and a place. Redwood Court is literally that - a cul-de-sac in an all-Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina. The main character is Mika as she grows up in the 1990s surrounded by family and their stories. The stories trace the history and reality of any family - the love, the loss, the joy, and the drama. Through this particular family, the book also portrays the history of being black in America, particularly in the American South. The fact that the reader sees these through the eyes of a child growing up in the 90s adds an additional layer as she navigates her childhood and also create an interesting perspective of the history embedded in the adult stories. As an adult reader, I read between the lines of what Mika sees to the deeper concepts that lie beyond.

The story is of history and community, much more character driven than plot driven. The place - Redwood Court - is as much a character in the book as the people. The history and the communitiy feels authentic. Redwood Court comes to life. I can see it full of real people, love, laughter, tears, conversations on the porch, and community coming together. The stories and the characters cover multiple generations and the history - spoken and unspoken - that surrounds them. It picks up on the everyday details of life, that help create a painting of this family and community.

Being character and history driven, the story is a slow and quiet one. While that may be the goal, that also keeps it from engaging me emotionally. Sometimes it is too quiet and too focused on time and place. I want more story. Perhaps, I want more focus on any of the myriad story lines rather than having them all seem to fade into the bigger picture. I want more of an anchor in a character's story. The fact that the story also jumps back and forth in time makes this more of a challenge as well. Being time and place driven, the book also just ends. There is not truly a conclusion because the point is not a plot to be concluded.

That being said, I am glad I read it. It made me think and reflect on American history and on the bonds of family and community. It made me walk through my own memories of the "Redwood Courts" of our family history and all the stories they hold.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Book of Fire

2025-09-11T20:17:00.000-04:00

Title: The Book of Fire

Author: Christy Lefteri

Publication Information: Ballantine Books. 2024. 336 pages.

ISBN: 0593497279 / 978-0593497272

Rating: ★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "This morning, I met the man who started the fire."

Favorite Quote: "There is something about stories that allows us to process the present. We listen to tales of tribulations overcome so that we might imagine we can survive ours. Children listen to the same fairy tale time and time again because there is a puzzle in their hearts that they unknowingly need to solve."

A small Greek village. An idyllic life. A fire. Life forever altered. An opportunity for retribution. A fateful, life altering decision. Life beyond with its challenges, its guilt, and its hope.

The book tells the story through Irini's eyes and, more importantly, the story of her thoughts. They meander through life before the fire, the fire, her decisions, and her coming to terms with that decision. Through Irini, the author offers commentary on global issues - climate change, global warming, the impact of development on the environment and the communities surrounding the development, and more. "We live in a world where we can have anything we want, and some people have learned not to accept no for an answer. Consequences mean nothing - they've probably never had to really face any. I am of a different generation, and you have a good, sensible head on your shoulders, but Mr. Monk... Well, what can I say? All greed and no kindness. Unfortunately, that gets you somewhere."

Pain and grief are the central themes of Irini's thoughts. Tasso's hands are burned, which causes physical pain and the emotional pain of being deprived of his artistic passion and livelihood. Tasso's father is missing. Chiara has significant burns, and, as we learn well into the book, is unable to walk without crutches. A child, whose name means Joy, is anything but joyful. Irini's pain comes not just from the suffering of her family but from the decision she makes when she meets the man responsible for the fire. The book is a tragic one. "Things are never as simple as they seem, always remember that in life. It is dangerous to see things in black and white, even - and maybe especially - during troubled times... Each side hates the other because of memories and traumas on both sides, some are ready and some are imagined, and these become national narratives. They demonize each other. The 'other' is always to blame and it fuels people and groups and governments with fire. This never leads to any good on this earth."

Because of the perspective, the book has the feel of a personal journal - an individual's musings as they try to process their own thoughts and emotions and to puzzle through and understand the situations they find themselves. The challenge of this perspective is that we process iteratively - thinking about something, stepping away from it, thinking again, often over and over again. Irini does the same. As a result, the book appears to repeat itself at times. It makes sense given the set up but presents a challenge as a reader because the pacing becomes very slow. I feel the emotion of the story but walk away, wanting more.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Amalfi Curse

2025-05-27T19:41:00.006-04:00

Title: The Amalfi Curse

Author: Sarah Penner

Publication Information: Harlequin Trade Publishing / Park Row. 2025. 336 pages.

ISBN: 0778308006 / 978-0778308003

Rating: ★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley and the HTP Books Summer 2025 blog tour free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "Signor Mazza: We have not formerly made each other's acquaintance, yet I pray you will take very seriously what I have to say."

Favorite Quote: "All we're promised is now."

* BLOG TOUR *

Review

The beautiful Amalfi coast overlooks overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Gulf of Salerno. The village of Positano climbs the hills above grottos, caves, and sea that lies below. The entire coastline has been deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Thousands, if not millions, of tourists flock there every year for its beautiful setting, its history, and its Mediterranean climate.

This story acknowledges that natural beauty but then goes beyond that to what lies beneath the surface of the water and the secrets the hills hold. "If people can't explain something logically, they'll resort to legends. The supernatural. Magic. Gods."

This two time period story brings to light the secrets of Positano and the waters that surround it. Witches, pirates, scoundrels, historians, and treasure hunters are all to be found in the story.

In 1821, Mari is a streghe del mare, a sea witch, descended from a line of witches dating back centuries. In Italian mythology, these witches are connected to the sea, with spells and incantations allowing them to alter the currents, the water, and the storms. In the story, Mari is a reluctant witch as, to her knowledge, the sea has robbed her of those she loves. Yet, she leads her group of witches, continuing to maneuver the water to protect her village and its inhabitants.

In present day, Haven comes to Positano on a sponsored project to study and map shipwrecks in the area. However, she has another, more hidden purpose.

The book tells both stories, weaving back and forth. Haven's research brings the reader closer and closer to the conclusion of Mari's story.

Often in dual timeline stories, one timeline is the more compelling story. In this case, it is Mari's. Mari's is the story of mothers and daughters and a sisterhood. Mari's is the story of witchcraft and powers, wanted or unwanted. Mari's is the story of pirates. Mari's is the love story told through letters and journals. Mari's is the story with the unexpected (at least to me) twist.

Haven's story has a premise that is compelling - a dying father's wish and a daughter's quest. However, certain elements of Haven's story - like the romance - come together to conveniently. Finally, what ultimately ties Haven's story to Mari's seems contrived and inconsistent with the code followed by Mari and her sisterhood.

The characters in Mari's story become more real than Haven and keep me reading until the ending. Nevertheless, the story overall remains engaging, and I look forward to more from the author.

About the Book

A nautical archaeologist searching for sunken treasure in Positano unearths a centuries-old curse, powerful witchcraft, and perilous love on the high seas in this spellbinding new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary—perfect for fans of The Familiar and The Cloisters.

Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature, or something more sinister at work?

In 1821, Mari DeLuca and the women of her village practice the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the power of the ocean. As their leader, Mari protects Positano with her witchcraft, but she has been plotting to run away with her lover, Holmes – a sailor aboard a merchant ship owned by the nefarious Mazza brothers, known for their greed and brutality. When the Mazzas learn about the women of Positano, they devise a plan to kidnap several of Mari’s friends. With her fellow witches and her village in danger – and Holmes’s life threatened by his connection to the most feared woman in Positano – Mari is forced to choose between the safety of her people and the man she loves.

As Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a tale of perilous love and powerful sorcery. Can she unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever? Against the dazzling backdrop of the Amalfi Coast, this bewitching novel shimmers with mystery, romance, and the untamed magic of the sea.

About the Author

Sarah Penner is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The London Seance Society and The Lost Apothecary, which will be translated into forty languages worldwide and is set to be turned into a drama series by Fox. Sarah spent thirteen years in corporate finance and now writes full-time. She and her husband live in Florida. To learn more, visit SarahPenner.com.

Excerpt

Excerpted from THE AMALFI CURSE by Sarah Penner. Copyright © 2025 by Sarah Penner. Published by Park Row, an imprint of HarperCollins.

1
MARI

Wednesday, April 11, 1821

Along a dark seashore beneath the cliffside village of Positano, twelve women, aged six to forty-four, were seated in a circle. It was two o’clock in the morning, the waxing moon directly overhead.

One of the women stood, breaking the circle. Her hair was the color of vermilion, as it had been since birth. Fully clothed, she walked waist-high into the water. A belemnite fossil clutched between her fingers, she plunged her hands beneath the waves and began to move her lips, reciting the first part of the incantesimo di riflusso she’d learned as a child. Within moments, the undercurrent she’d conjured began to swirl at her ankles, tugging southward, away from her.

She shuffled her way out of the water and back onto the shore.

A second woman with lighter hair, the color of persimmon, stood from the circle. She, too, approached the ocean and plunged her hands beneath the surface. She recited her silent spell on the sea, satisfied as the undercurrent grew even stronger. She gazed out at the horizon, a steady black line where the sky met the sea, and smiled.

Like the other villagers along the coast tonight, these women knew what was coming: a fleet of pirate ships making their way northeast from Tunis. Winds were favorable, their sources said, and the flotilla was expected within the next day.

Their destination? Perhaps Capri, Sorrento, Majori. Some thought maybe even Positano—maybe, finally, Positano.

Given this, fishermen all along the Amalfi coastline had decided to remain at home with their families tomorrow and into the night. It wouldn’t be safe on the water. The destination of these pirates was unknown, and what they sought was a mystery, as well. Greedy pirates went for all kinds of loot. Hungry pirates went for nets full of fish. Lustful pirates went for the women.

On the seashore, a third and final woman stood from the circle. Her hair was the rich, deep hue of blood. Quickly, she undressed. She didn’t like the feeling of wet fabric against her skin, and these women had seen her naked a thousand times before.

Belemnite fossil in one hand, she held the end of a rope in her other, which was tied to a heavy anchor in the sand a short distance away. She would be the one to recite the final piece of this current-curse. Her recitation was the most important, the most potent, and after it was done, the ebbing undercurrent would be even more severe—hence the rope, which she would wrap tightly around herself before finishing the spell.

It was perilous, sinister work. Still, of the twelve women by the water tonight, twenty-year-old Mari DeLuca was the most befitting for this final task.

They were streghe del mare—sea witches—with unparalleled power over the ocean. They boasted a magic found nowhere else in the world, a result of their lineage, having descended from the sirens who once inhabited the tiny Li Galli islets nearby.

The women knew that tomorrow, wherever the pirates landed, it would not be Positano. The men would not seize their goods, their food, their daughters. No matter how the pirate ships rigged their sails, they would not find easy passageway against the undercurrent the women now drew upward from the bottom of the sea. They would turn east, or west. They would go elsewhere.

They always did.

While the lineage of the other eleven women was twisted and tangled, filled with sons or muddled by marriage, Mari DeLuca’s line of descent was perfectly intact: her mother had been a strega, and her mother’s mother, and so on and so on, tracing back thousands of years to the sirens themselves. Of the women on the seashore tonight, Mari was the only strega finisima.

This placed upon her shoulders many great responsibilities. She could instinctively read the water better than any of them. Her spells were the most effective, too; she alone could do what required two or three other streghe working in unison. As such, she was the sanctioned leader of the eleven other women. The forewoman, the teacher, the decision-maker.

Oh, but what a shame she hated the sea as much as she did.

Stepping toward the water, Mari unraveled her long plait of hair. It was her most striking feature—such blood-colored hair was almost unheard of in Italy, much less in the tiny fishing village of Positano—but then, much of what Mari had inherited was unusual. She tensed as the cold waves rushed over her feet. My mother should be the one doing this, she thought bitterly. It was a resentment she’d never released, not in twelve years, since the night when eight-year-old Mari had watched the sea claim her mother, Imelda, as its own.

On that terrible night, newly motherless and reeling, Mari knew the sea was no longer her friend. But worse than this, she worried for her younger sister, Sofia. How would Mari break this news to her? How could she possibly look after spirited Sofia with as much patience and warmth as their mamma had once done?

She’d hardly had time to grieve. The next day, the other streghe had swiftly appointed young Mari as the new strega finisima. Her mother had taught her well, after all, and she was, by birthright, capable of more than any of them. No one seemed to care that young Mari was so tender and heartbroken or that she now despised the very thing she had such control over.

But most children lose their mothers at some point, don’t they? And sprightly Sofia had been reason enough to forge on—a salve to Mari’s aching heart. Sofia had kept her steady, disciplined. Even cheerful, much of the time. So long as Sofia was beside her, Mari would shoulder the responsibilities that had been placed upon her, willingly or not.

Now, toes in the water, a pang of anguish struck Mari, as it often did at times like this.

Neither Mamma nor Sofia was beside her tonight. Mari let out a slow exhale. This moment was an important one, worth remembering. It was the end of two years’ worth of agonizing indecision. No one else on the seashore knew it, but this spell, this incantation she was about to recite, would be her very last. She was leaving in only a few weeks’ time, breaking free. And the place she was going was mercifully far from the sea.

Eyes down, Mari slipped her naked body beneath the water, cursing the sting of it as it seeped into a small rash on her ankle. At once, the water around her turned from dark blue to a thick inky black, like vinegar. Mari had dealt with this all her life: the sea mirrored her mood, her temperament.

As a child, she’d found it marvelous, the way the ocean read her hidden thoughts so well. Countless times, her friends had expressed envy of the phenomenon. But now, the black water shuddering around her legs only betrayed the secrets Mari meant to keep, and she was glad for the darkness, so better to hide her feelings from those on the shore.

Halfway into the water, already she could feel the changes in the sea: the two women before her had done very well with their spells. This was encouraging, at least. A few sharp rocks, churned by the undercurrent, scraped across the top of her feet like thorns, and it took great focus to remain in place against the undertow pulling her out. She used her arms to keep herself balanced, as a tired bird might flap its wings on an unsteady branch.

She wrapped the rope twice around her forearm. Once it was secure, she began to recite the spell. With each word, tira and obbedisci—pull and obey—the rope tightened against her skin. The undercurrent was intensifying quickly, and with even more potency than she expected. She winced when the rope broke her skin, the fresh wound exposed instantly to the bite of the salt water. She began to stumble, losing her balance, and she finished the incantation as quickly as possible, lest the rope leave her arm mangled.

She wouldn’t miss nights like this, not at all.

When she was done, Mari waved, signaling to the other women that it was time to pull her in. Instantly she felt a tug on the other end of the rope. A few seconds later, she was in shallow, gentle water. On her hands and knees, she crawled the rest of the way. Safely on shore, she lay down to rest, sand and grit sticking uncomfortably to her wet skin. She would need to wash well later.

Terribly time-consuming, all of this.

A sudden shout caught her attention, and Mari sat up, peering around in the darkness. Her closest friend, Ami, was now knee-deep in the water, struggling to keep her balance.

“Lia!” Ami shouted hysterically. “Lia, where are you?”

Lia was Ami’s six-year-old daughter, a strega-in-training, her hair a delicate, rosy red. Not moments ago, she’d been situated among the circle of women, her spindly legs tucked up against her chest, watching the spells unfold.

Mari threw herself upward, tripping as she lunged toward the ocean.

“No, please, no,” she cried out. If Lia was indeed in the water, it would be impossible for the young girl to make her way back to shore. She was smaller than other girls her age, her bones fragile as seashells, and though she could swim, she’d have nothing against the power of these tides. The very purpose of the incantation had been to drive the currents toward the deep, dark sea, with enough strength to stave off a pirate ship.

Lia wasn’t wearing a cimaruta, either, which gave the women great strength and vigor in moments of distress. She was too young: streghe didn’t get their talisman necklaces until they were fifteen, when their witchcraft had matured and they were deemed proficient in the art.

At once, every woman on the shore was at the ocean’s edge, peering at the water’s choppy surface. The women might have been powerful, yes, but they were not immortal: as Mari knew all too well, they could succumb to drowning just like anyone else.

Mari spun in a circle, scanning the shore. Suddenly her belly tightened, and she bent forward, her vision going dark and bile rising in the back of her throat.

This was too familiar—her spinning in circles, scanning the horizon in search of someone.

Seeing nothing.

Then seeing the worst.

Like her younger sister’s copper-colored hair, splayed out around the shoulders of her limp body as she lay facedown in the rolling swells of the sea.

Mari had been helpless, unable to protect fourteen-year-old Sofia from whatever she’d encountered beneath the waves that day, only two years ago. Mari had spent years trying to protect her sister as their mother could not, yet in the end, she had failed. She’d failed Sofia.

That day, the sea had once again proved itself not only greedy but villainous—something to be loathed.

Something, Mari eventually decided, from which to escape.

Now, Mari fell to her knees, too dizzy to stand. It was as though her body had been hauled back in time to that ill-fated morning. She bent forward, body heaving, about to be sick—

Suddenly, she heard a giggle, high-pitched and playful. It sounded just like Sofia, and for a moment, Mari thought she’d slipped into a dream.

“I am here, Mamma,” came Lia’s voice from a short distance away. “I am digging in the sand for baby gran—” She cut off. “I forget the word.”

Ami let out a cry, relief and irritation both. She ran toward her child, clutched her to her breast. “Granchio,” she said. “And don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

Mari sat up, overwhelmed by relief. She didn’t have children, was not even married, but Lia sometimes felt like her own.

She steadied her breath. Lia is fine, she said silently to herself. She is perfectly well, on land, right here in front of all of us. Yet even as her breath slowed, she could not resist glancing once more behind her, scanning the wave tops.

The women who’d performed the spell changed into dry clothes.

Lia pulled away from Ami’s embrace, sneaking toward Mari, who welcomed her with a warm, strong hug. Mari bent over to kiss the girl’s head, breathing in her fragrance of oranges, sugar, and sweat.

Lia turned her narrow face to Mari, her lips in a frown. “The spell will protect us from the pirates forever?”

Mari smiled. If only it worked that way. She thought of the pirate ship approaching the peninsula tonight. If it did indeed make for Positano, she imagined the captain cursing under his breath. Damn these currents, he might say. I’ve had my eye on Positano. What is it with that village? He would turn to his first mate and order him to alter the rigging, set an eastward course. Anywhere but this slice of troublesome water, he’d hiss at his crew.

“No,” Mari said now. “Our magia does not work that way.”

She paused, considering what more to tell the girl. Nearly every spell the women recited dissipated in a matter of days, but there was a single spell, the vortice centuriaria, which endured for one hundred years. It could only be recited if a strega removed her protective cimaruta necklace. And the cost of performing such magic was substantial: she had to sacrifice her own life in order for the spell to be effective. As far as Mari knew, no one had performed the spell in hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years.

Such a grim topic wasn’t appropriate now, not with young Lia, so she kept her explanation simple. “Our spells last several days, at the most. No different than what a storm does to the ocean: churns it up, tosses it about. Eventually, though, the sea returns to normal. The sea always prevails.”

How much she hated to admit this. Even the vortice centuriaria, long-lasting as it was, faded eventually. The women could do powerful things with the sea, yes, but they were not masters of it.

“This is why we keep very close to our informants,” Mari went on. “There are people who tell us when pirates, or strange ships, have been spotted offshore. Knowing our spells will only last a few days, we must be diligent. We cannot curse the water too soon nor too late. Our fishermen need good, smooth water for their hauls, so we must only curse the water when we are sure there is a threat.” She smiled, feeling a tad smug. “We are very good at it, Lia.”

Lia traced her finger in the sand, making a big oval. “Mamma tells me I can do anything with the sea when I am older. Anything at all.”

It was an enticing sentiment, this idea that they had complete control over the ocean, but it was false. Their spells were really quite simple and few—there were only seven of them—and they abided by the laws of nature.

“I would like to see one of those big white bears,” Lia went on, “so I will bring an iceberg here, all the way from the Arctic.”

“Sadly,” Mari said, “I fear that is too far. We can push the pirates away because they are not all that far from us. But the Arctic? Well, there are many land masses separating us from your beloved polar bears…”

“I will go to live with other sea witches when I’m older, then,” Lia said. “Witches who live closer to the Arctic.”

“It is only us, dear. There are no other sea witches.” At Lia’s perturbed look, she explained, “We descended from the sirens, who lived on those islands—” she pointed to the horizon, where the Li Galli islets rose out of the water “—and we are the only women in the world who inherited power over the ocean.”

Lia slumped forward, let out a sigh.

“You will still be able to do many things,” Mari encouraged. “Just not everything.”

Like saving the people you love, she mused. Even to this day, the loss of little Sofia felt so senseless, so unneeded. The sisters had been in only a few feet of water, doing somersaults and handstands, diving for sea glass. They had passed the afternoon this way a thousand times before. Later, Mari would wonder if Sofia had knocked her head against the ground, or maybe she’d accidentally inhaled a mouthful of water. Whatever happened, Sofia had noiselessly slipped beneath the rippling tide.

She’s playing a trick, Mari thought as the minutes passed. She’s holding her breath and will come up any moment. The girls did this often, making games of guessing where the other might emerge. But Sofia didn’t emerge, not this time. And just a few months shy of fifteen, she hadn’t been wearing a cimaruta.

Lia began to add small lines to the edge of her circle. She was drawing an eye with lashes. “Mamma says you can do more than she can,” she chirped. “That it takes two or three of the streghe to do what you can do by yourself.”

“Yes,” Mari said. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Because of your mamma who died?”

Mari flinched at this, then quickly moved on. “Yes. And my nonna, and her mamma, and so on. All the way back many thousands of years. There is something different in our blood.”

“But not mine.”

“You are special in plenty of ways. Think of the baby needlefish, for instance. You’re always spotting them, even though they’re nearly invisible and they move terribly fast.” \

“They’re easy to spot,” Lia disputed, brows furrowed.

“Not for me. You understand? We are each skilled in our own way.”

Suddenly, Lia turned her face up to Mari. “Still, I hope you do not die, since you have the different, special blood and no one else does.”

Mari recoiled, taken aback by Lia’s comment. It was almost as though the young girl sensed Mari’s covert plans. “Go find your mamma,” she told Lia, who stood at once, ruining her sand art.

After she’d gone, Mari gazed at the hillside rising up behind them. This beach was not their normal place for practicing magic: Mari typically led the women to one of countless nearby caves or grottoes, protected from view, via a pair of small gozzi, seating six to a boat. But tonight had been different—one of the gozzi had come loose from its mooring, and it had drifted out into the open ocean. This had left the women with only one boat, and it wasn’t big enough to hold them all.

“Let’s gather on the beach instead,” she’d urged. “We’ll be out but a few minutes.” Besides, it was the middle of the night, and the moon had been mostly hidden behind clouds, so it was very dark.

While a few of the women looked at her warily, everyone had agreed in the end.

Mari stood and squeezed the water from her hair. It was nearly three o’clock, and all of the women were yawning.

She shoved the wet rope into her bag and dressed quickly, pulling her shift over her protective cimaruta necklace. Hers bore tiny amulets from the sea and coastline: a moon shell, an ammonite fossil, a kernel of gray volcanic pumice. Recently, Mari had found a tiny coral fragment in the perfect shape of a mountain, which she especially liked. Mountains made her think of inland places, which made her think of freedom.

As the women began to make their way up the hillside, Mari felt fingertips brush her arm. “Psst,” Ami whispered. In her hand was a small envelope, folded tightly in half.

Mari’s heart surged. “A letter.”

Ami winked. “It arrived yesterday.”

It had been two weeks since the last one, and as tempted as Mari was to tear open the envelope and read it in the moonlight, she tucked it against her bosom. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Suddenly, Mari caught movement in the corner of her eye, something on the dock a short distance away. At first, she thought she’d imagined it—clouds skirted across the sky, and the night was full of shadows—but then she gasped as a dark form quickly made its way off the dock, around a small building, and out of sight.

Something—someone—had most definitely been over there. A man. A late-night rendezvous, perhaps? Or had he been alone and spying on the women?

Mari turned to tell Ami, but her friend had already gone ahead, a hand protectively on Lia’s back.

As they stepped onto the dirt pathway scattered with carts and closed-up vendor stands, Mari turned around once more to glance at the dock. But there was nothing, no one. The dock lay in darkness.

Just a trick of the moonlight, she told herself.

Besides, she had a very important letter nestled against her chest—one she intended to tear open the moment she got home.

Social Links

Author Website: https://www.sarahpenner.com/
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Buy Links

HarperCollins: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/bat-eater-and-other-names-for-cora-zeng-kylie-lee-baker?variant=42432011436066
BookShop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/397/9780778368458
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Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=9781335041791&tag=hcg-02-20

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Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

2025-05-14T20:38:00.004-04:00

Title: Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng: A Horror Mystery of a Chinese American Crime Scene Cleaner, Serial Killers and Hungry Ghosts

Author: Kylie Lee Baker

Publication Information: MIRA. 2025. 304 pages.

ISBN: 0778368459 / 978-0778368458

Rating: ★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley and a publisher's blog tour free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "East Broadway station bleeds when it rains, water rushing down from cracks in the secret darkness of the ceiling."

Favorite Quote: "Cora asked once why fear is a sin. Auntie Lois said that it shows distrust in God, that one should not fear men and only fear God."

* BLOG TOUR *

Review

This book has one of the most intense beginnings I have read in a long time. Cora and her sister Delilah are waiting for the subway train. All of a sudden, someone (something?) pushes Delilah into the coming train, instantly killing her in a gruesome way that Cora witnesses.

The rest of the book is predicated on this very real trauma. Add to this a setting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Add to that the fact that the main character is of Asian heritage and the ensuing racial prejudice, particularly as news about the origins of the pandemic swirled. Add on top of that the main character's profession as a crime scene cleaner (a profession which I suppose exists but not one that had occurred to me before this book). Surround that with the very real and very imagined ghost, threats, and anxiety that Cora deals with. All of that should be the foundation of a compelling, sympathetic character and a memorable story.

Unfortunately, I find myself lost in the book. Cora does not hold my attention. Too many things - horror genre, racism, prejudice, pandemic, main character who needs help for her trauma, and cultural folklore references embed themselves in gory - but boring at the same time - descriptions. I am not sure where the book is going at any given point, and even by the end, am unsure what the point was.

Perhaps, horror is not a genre I read often and I miss the point. Perhaps, the story starts off with such a visual and intense moment that it cannot recapture that intensity. Perhaps, too many things are included. Perhaps, I do not understand the cultural and folklore reference and, hence, I do not understand the book. In other similar circumstances, I might look up and read references to better understand. Unfortunately, this book does not prompt me down that road. Perhaps, the ending to the mystery of the murders is too anticlimactic. Perhaps, too much of Cora's story is told through her inner musings and not enough shown in a way to engage the reader. Perhaps, the book feels as though it begins to repeat itself.

I do appreciate the light this book sheds on life in the pandemic and the racial hate and prejudice that is sadly still a part of our society. That conversation and the sad reasons it still continues is an important one. However, unfortunately, for many other reasons, I find myself not the reader for this book.

About the Book

This unsettling adult debut from Kylie Lee Baker follows a biracial crime scene cleaner who’s haunted by both her inner trauma and hungry ghosts as she's entangled in a series of murders in New York City's Chinatown. Parasite meets The Only Good Indians in this sharp novel that explores harsh social edges through the lens of the horror genre.

Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner in New York City’s Chinatown, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides. But none of that seems so terrible when she’s already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: in the early months of 2020, her sister Delilah was pushed in front of a train as Cora stood next to her. Before fleeing the scene, the murderer whispered two words: bat eater.

So the bloody messes don’t really bother Cora—she’s more bothered by the possible germs on the subway railing, the bare hands of a stranger, the hidden viruses in every corner. And by the strange spots in her eyes and that food keeps going missing in her apartment. Of course, ever since Delilah was killed in front of her, Cora can’t be sure what anxiety is real and what’s in her head. She can barely keep herself together as it is.

She pushes away all feelings, ignoring the bite marks that appear on her coffee table, ignoring the advice of her aunt to burn joss paper and other paper replicas of items to send to the dead and to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open. Ignores the dread in her stomach as she and her weird coworkers keep finding bat carcasses at their crime scene cleanups. Ignores the scary fact that all their recent cleanups have been the bodies of Asian women.

But as Cora will soon learn, you can’t just ignore hungry ghosts.

About the Author

Kylie Lee Baker is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Keeper of Night duology, The Scarlet Alchemist duology, and the forthcoming adult horror Bat Eater. She grew up in Boston and has since lived in Atlanta, Salamanca, and Seoul. Her writing is informed by her heritage (Japanese, Chinese, and Irish), as well as her experiences living abroad as both a student and teacher. She has a BA in creative writing and Spanish from Emory University and a master of library and information science degree from Simmons University.

Excerpt

ONE
April 2020

East Broadway station bleeds when it rains, water rushing down from cracks in the secret darkness of the ceiling. Someone should probably fix that, but it’s the end of the world, and New York has bigger problems than a soggy train station that no one should be inside of anyway. No one takes the subway at the end of the world. No one except Cora and Delilah Zeng.

Delilah wanders too close to the edge of the platform and Cora grabs her arm, tugging her away from the abyss of the tracks that unlatches its jaws, waiting. But Delilah settles safely behind the yellow line and the darkness clenches its teeth.

Outside the wet mouth of the station, New York is empty. The China Virus, as they call it, has cleared the streets. News stations flash through footage of China—bodies in garbage bags, guards and tanks protecting the city lines, sobbing doctors waving their last goodbyes from packed trains, families who just want to fucking live but are trapped in the plague city for the Greater Good.

On the other side of the world, New York is so empty it echoes. You can scream and the ghost of your voice will carry for blocks and blocks. The sound of footsteps lasts forever, the low hum of streetlights a warm undercurrent that was always there, waiting, but no one could hear it until now. Delilah says it’s unnerving, but Cora likes the quiet, likes how much bigger the city feels, likes that the little lights from people’s apartment windows are the only hint of their existence, no one anything more than a bright little square in the sky.

What she doesn’t like is that she can’t find any toilet paper at the end of the world.

Apparently, people do strange things when they’re scared of dying, and one of them is hoarding toilet paper. Cora and Delilah have been out for an hour trying to find some and finally managed to grab a four-pack of one-ply in Chinatown, which is better than nothing but not by much.

They had to walk in the rain because they couldn’t get an Uber. No one wants Chinese girls in their car, and they’re not the kind of Chinese that can afford their own car in a city where it isn’t necessary. But now that they have the precious paper, they’d rather not walk home in the rain and end up with a sodden mess in their arms.

“The train isn’t coming,” Cora says. She feels certain of this. She feels certain about a lot of things she can’t explain, the way some people are certain that God exists. Some thoughts just cross her mind and sink their teeth in. Besides, the screen overhead that’s supposed to tell them when the next train arrives has said DELAYS for the last ten minutes.

“It’s coming,” Delilah says, checking her phone, then tucking it away when droplets from the leaky roof splatter onto the screen. Delilah is also certain about many things, but for different reasons. Delilah chooses the things she wants to believe, while Cora’s thoughts are bear traps snapping closed around her ankles.

Sometimes Cora thinks Delilah is more of a dream than a sister, a camera flash of pretty lights in every color that you can never look at directly. She wraps herself up in pale pink and wispy silk and flower hair clips; she wears different rings on each finger that all have a special meaning; she is Alice in Wonderland who has stumbled out of a rabbit hole and somehow arrived in New York from a world much more kind and lovely than this one.

Cora hugs the toilet paper to her chest and peers into the silent train tunnel. She can’t see even a whisper of light from the other side. The darkness closes in like a wall. The train cannot be coming because trains can’t break through walls.

Or maybe Cora just doesn’t want to go home, because going home with Delilah means remembering that there is a world outside of this leaky station.

There is their dad in China, just a province away from the epicenter of body bags. And there is the man who emptied his garbage over their heads from his window and called them Chinks on the walk here. And there is the big question of What Comes Next? Because another side effect of the end of the world is getting laid off.

Cora used to work the front desk at the Met, which wasn’t exactly what an art history degree was designed for and certainly didn’t justify the debt. But it was relevant enough to her studies that for a few months it stopped shame from creeping in like black mold and coating her lungs in her sleep. But no one needs museums at the end of the world, so no one needs Cora.

Delilah answered emails and scheduled photo shoots for a local fashion magazine that went belly-up as soon as someone whispered the word pandemic, and suddenly there were two art history majors, twenty-four and twenty-six, with work experience in dead industries and New York City rent to pay. Now the money is gone and there are no careers to show for it and the worst part is that they had a chance, they had a Nai Nai who paid for half their tuition because she thought America was for dreams. They didn’t have to wait tables or strip or sell Adderall to pay for college but they somehow messed it up anyway, and Cora thinks that’s worse than having no chance at all. She thinks a lot of other things about herself too, but she lets those thoughts go quickly, snaps her hands away from them like they’re a hot pan that will burn her skin.

Cora thinks this is all Delilah’s fault but won’t say it out loud because that’s another one of her thoughts that no one wants to hear. It’s a little bit her own fault as well, for not having her own dreams. If there was anything Cora actually wanted besides existing comfortably, she would have known what to study in college, wouldn’t have had to chase after Delilah.

But not everyone has dreams. Some people just are, the way that trees and rocks and rivers are just there without a reason, the rest of the world moving around them.

Cora thinks that the water dripping down the wall looks oddly dark, more so than the usual sludge of the city, and maybe it has a reddish tinge, like the city has slit its own wrists and is dying in this empty station. But she knows better than to say this out loud, because everything looks dirty to her, and Cora Zeng thinking something is dirty doesn’t mean the average human agrees—at least, that’s what everyone tells her.

“Maybe I’ll work at a housekeeping company,” Cora says, half to herself and half to the echoing tunnel, but Delilah answers anyway.

“You know that’s a bad idea,” she says.

Cora shrugs. Objectively, she understands that if you scrub yourself raw with steel wool one singular time, no one likes it when you clean anything for the rest of your life. But things still need to be cleaned even if Delilah doesn’t like it, and Cora thinks there are worse things than leaning a little bit into the crazy parts of you. Isn’t that what artists do, after all? Isn’t that the kind of person Delilah likes? The tortured artist types who smoke indoors and paint with their own blood and feces.

“Mama cleaned toilets for rich white people because she had no choice,” Delilah says. “You have a college degree and that’s what you want to do?”

Cora doesn’t answer at first because Mama means Delilah’s mom, so Cora doesn’t see why her thoughts on Cora’s life should matter. Cora doesn’t have a Mama. She has a Mom, a white lady from Wisconsin who probably hired someone else’s mama to clean her toilet.

Cora quite likes cleaning toilets, but this is another thing she knows she shouldn’t say out loud. Instead, she says, “What I want is to make rent this month.”

Legally, Cora’s fairly certain they can’t be evicted during the pandemic, but she doesn’t want to piss off their landlord, the man who sniffs their mail and saves security camera footage of Delilah entering the building. He price-gouges them for a crappy fourth-floor walkup in the East Village with a radiator that vomits a gallon of brown water onto their floor in the winter and a marching band of pipes banging in the walls, but somehow Cora doubts they’ll find anything better without jobs.

Delilah smiles with half her mouth, her gaze distant like Cora is telling her a fairy tale. “I’ve been burning lemongrass for money energy,” Delilah says. “We’ll be fine.” This is another thing Delilah just knows.

Cora hates the smell of lemongrass. The scent coats her throat, wakes her up at night feeling like she’s drowning in oil. But she doesn’t know if the oils are a Chinese thing or just a Delilah thing, and she hates accidentally acting like a white girl around Delilah. Whenever she does, Delilah gives her this look, like she’s remembered who Cora really is, and changes the subject.

“The train is late,” Cora says instead of acknowledging the lemongrass. “I don’t think it’s coming.”

“It’s coming, Cee,” Delilah says.

“I read that they reduced service since no one’s taking the train these days,” Cora says. “What if it doesn’t stop here anymore?”

“It’s coming,” Delilah says. “It’s not like we have a choice except waiting here anyway.”

Cora’s mind flashes with the image of both their skeletons standing at the station, waiting for a train that never comes, while the world crumbles around them. They could walk— they only live in the East Village—but Delilah is made of sugar and her makeup melts off in the rain and her umbrella is too small and she said no, so that’s the end of it. Delilah is not Cora’s boss, she’s not physically intimidating, and she has no blackmail to hold over her, but Cora knows the only choice is to do what Delilah says. When you’re drowning and someone grabs your hand, you don’t ask them where they’re taking you.

A quiet breeze sighs through the tunnel, a dying exhale. It blows back Delilah’s bangs and Cora notices that Delilah has penciled in her eyebrows perfectly, even though it’s raining and they only went out to the store to buy toilet paper. Something about the sharp arch of her left eyebrow in particular triggers a thought that Cora doesn’t want to think, but it bites down all the same.

Sometimes, Cora thinks she hates her sister.

It’s strange how hate and love can so quietly exist at the same time. They are moon phases, one silently growing until one day all that’s left is darkness. It’s not something that Delilah says or does, really. Cora is used to her small annoyances.

It’s that Delilah is a daydream and standing next to her makes Cora feel real.

Cora has pores full of sweat and oil, socks with stains on the bottom, a stomach that sloshes audibly after she eats. Delilah is a pretty arrangement of refracted light who doesn’t have to worry about those things. Cora wanted to be like her for a very long time, because who doesn’t want to transcend their disgusting body and become Delilah Zeng, incorporeal, eternal? But Cora’s not so sure anymore.

Cora peers into the tunnel. We are going to be stuck here forever, Cora thinks, knows.

But then the sound begins, a rising symphony to Cora’s ears. The ground begins to rumble, puddles shivering.

“Finally,” Delilah says, pocketing her phone. “See? I told you.”

Cora nods because Delilah did tell her and sometimes Delilah is right. The things Cora thinks she knows are too often just bad dreams bleeding into her waking hours.

Far away, the headlights become visible in the darkness. A tiny mouth of white light.

“Cee,” Delilah says. Her tone is too delicate, and it makes coldness curl around Cora’s heart. Delilah tosses words out easily, dandelion parachutes carried about by the wind. But these words have weight.

Delilah toys with her bracelet—a jade bangle from their Auntie Zeng, the character for hope on the gold band. Cora has a matching one, shoved in a drawer somewhere, except the plate says love, at least that’s what Cora thinks. She’s not very good at reading Chinese.

“I’m thinking of going to see Dad,” Delilah says.

The mouth of light at the end of the tunnel has expanded into a door of brilliant white, and Cora waits because this cannot be all. Dad lives in Changsha, has lived there ever since America became too much for him, except it’s always been too much for Cora too and she has nowhere to run away to, her father hasn’t given her the words she needs. Delilah has visited him twice in the last five years, so this news isn’t enough to make Delilah’s voice sound so tight, so nervous.

“I think I might stay there awhile,” Delilah says, looking away. “Now that I’m out of work, it seems like a good time to get things settled before the pandemic blows over.”

Cora stares at the side of Delilah’s head because her sister won’t meet her gaze. Cora isn’t stupid, she knows what this is a “good time” for. Delilah started talking about being a model in China last year. Cora doesn’t know if the odds are better in China and she doubts Delilah knows either. All she knows is that Delilah tried for all of three months to make a career of modeling in New York until that dream fizzled out, smoke spiraling from it, and Delilah stopped trying because everything is disposable to her, right down to her dreams.

Cora always thought this particular dream would be too expensive, too logistically complicated for Delilah to actually follow through on. Worst-case scenario, they’d plan a three-week vacation to China that would turn into a week and a half when Delilah lost interest and started fighting with Dad again. The idea of flying during a pandemic feels like a death sentence, but Cora has already resigned herself to hunting down some N95 respirators just so Delilah could give her modeling dream an honest try.

Because even if Delilah tends to extinguish her own dreams too fast, Cora believes in them for all of their brief, brilliant lives. If Cora ever found a dream of her own, she would nurture it in soft soil, measure out each drop of water, each sunbeam, give it a chance to become. So Cora will not squash her sister’s dreams, not for anything.

“I’ll just put my half of the rent on my credit card until I find work,” Delilah says, “so you won’t need a new roommate.”

Then Cora understands, all at once, like a knife slipped between her ribs, that Delilah isn’t inviting Cora to come with her.

Of course she isn’t. Delilah has a mama who speaks Mandarin to her, so Delilah’s Chinese is good enough to live in China. But Cora’s isn’t. Delilah would have to do everything for her, go everywhere with her because she knows Cora would cry just trying to check out at the supermarket. Delilah could do it for her, but she doesn’t want to.

Cora suddenly feels like a child who has wandered too far into a cave. The echoes become ghosts and the darkness wraps in tight ribbons around your throat and you call for a mom who will never come.

Cora’s hands shake, fingers pressing holes into the plastic wrap of the toilet paper, her whole body vibrating with the sheer unfairness of it all. You can’t string someone along their whole life and then just leave them alone one day holding your toilet paper in a soggy train station.

“Or you could stay with your aunt?” Delilah says. “Then you wouldn’t have to worry about rent. It would be better for both of us, I think.”

Auntie Lois, she means. Mom’s sister, whose house smells like a magazine, who makes Cora kneel in a confessional booth until she can name all her sins. Delilah has decided that this is Cora’s life, and Delilah is the one who makes decisions.

Delilah keeps talking, but Cora can’t hear her. The world rumbles as the train draws closer. The white light is too bright now, too sharp behind Delilah, and it illuminates her silhouette, carves her into the wet darkness. Delilah has a beautiful silhouette, the kind that men would have painted hundreds of years ago. Cora thinks about the Girl with a Pearl Earring, and the Mona Lisa, and all the beautiful women immortalized in oil paint, and wonders if they said cruel things too, if their words had mattered at all or just the roundness of their eyes and softness of their cheeks, if beautiful people are allowed to break your heart and get away with it.

The man appears in a flash of a black hoodie and blue surgical mask.

He says two words, and even though the train is rushing closer, a roaring wave about to knock them off their feet, those two words are perfectly clear, sharp as if carved into Cora’s skin.

Bat eater.

Cora has heard those words a lot the past two months. The end of the world began at a wet market in Wuhan, they say, with a sick bat. Cora has never once eaten a bat, but it has somehow become common knowledge that Chinese people eat bats just to start plagues.

Cora only glances at the man’s face for a moment before her gaze snaps to his pale hand clamped around Delilah’s skinny arm like a white spider, crunching the polyester of her pink raincoat. Lots of men grab Delilah because she is the kind of girl that men want to devour. Cora thinks the man will try to kiss Delilah, or force her up the stairs and into a cab, or a thousand things better than what actually happens next.

Because he doesn’t pull her close. He pushes her away.

Delilah stumbles over the yellow line, ankle twisting, and when she crashes down there’s no ground to meet her, just the yawning chasm of the train tracks.

The first car hits her face.

All at once, Cora’s skin is scorched with something viscous and salty. Brakes scream and blue sparks fly and the wind blasts her hair back, the liquid rushing across her throat, under her shirt. Her first thought is that the train has splashed her in some sort of track sludge, and for half a second that is the worst thought in the entire world. The toilet paper falls from Cora’s arms and splashes into a puddle when it hits the ground and There goes the whole point of the trip, she thinks.

Delilah does not stand up. The train is a rushing blur of silver, a solid wall of hot air and screeching metal and Delilah is on the ground, her skirt pooling out around her. Get up, Delilah, Cora thinks, because train station floors are rainforests of bacteria tracked in from so many millions of shoes, because the puddle beneath her can’t be just rainwater—it looks oddly dark, almost black, spreading fast like a hole opening up in the floor. Cora steps closer and it almost, almost looks like Delilah is leaning over the ledge, peering over the lip of the platform.

But Delilah ends just above her shoulders.

Her throat is a jagged line, torn flaps of skin and sharp bone and the pulsing O of her open trachea. Blood runs unstopped from her throat, swirling together with the rainwater of the rotting train station, and soon the whole platform is bleeding, weeping red water into the crack between the platform and the train, feeding the darkness. Cora is screaming, a raw sound that begins somewhere deep inside her rib cage and tears its way up her throat and becomes a hurricane, a knife-sharp cry, the last sound that many women ever make.

But there’s no one to hear it because New York is a dead body, because no one rides the subway at the end of the world. No one but Cora Zeng.

Buy Links

Social Links

Author Website: https://www.kylieleebaker.com/
Instagram: \https://www.instagram.com/kylieleebaker/
X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/KylieYamashiro
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20095503.Kylie_Lee_Baker

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Midnight in Soap Lake

2025-04-29T19:07:00.001-04:00

Title: Midnight in Soap Lake

Author: Matthew Sullivan

Publication Information: Hanover Square Press. 2025. 416 pages.

ISBN: 1335041796 / 978-1335041791

Rating: ★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley and the Harlequin Trade Publishing's Winter 2025 Blog Tour Program free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "Something was there."

Favorite Quote: "Collection was distraction. It allowed the journey to never end, like the roads he walked each day."

* BLOG TOUR *

Review

Soap Lake is an actual lake and an actual town. The small town has a population around 1,800. In the state of Washington, this lake has many unique features. Its layers of water do not mix; the scientific term is meromictic. It is a "soda" lake, meaning it has a high alkaline nature. It was formed by glacial flooding at the end of the last ice age. It has the name "Soap Lake" because it has a natural foam and its high mineral content gives the water a slick, soapy feel. The lake is about two square miles and is said to have some of the most diverse mineral content in the world. As such, many believe the water to have medical properties. In fact, for a period of time, the location became a site of spas and sanitariums for those suffering from a wide variety of ailments.

The science provides the background for this story because it is the science that brings the main character - Abigail - and her scientist husband Eli to Soap Lake. The story goes that Eli and Abigail settle into a house, and Eli settles into his work. Eli lets himself be tempted by another scientific project in Europe. Abigail is left alone in a new place with no real support system. Then, strange things start happening.

A child is found. A dead woman is found. A connection to the past is found. More strange happenings in the past form a pattern. The question is why and what does it mean for Abigail. I say only Abigail because Eli leaves. This is very much Abigail's story not Eli and Abigail's.

This book is part science fiction because the reality of the lake is based in its science. This book is part thriller and murder mystery. The book is part urban legend with Treetop, the bogeyman of Soap Lake.

Like Matthew Sullivan's Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, the book slowly peels back the layers to connect past to present. The crimes described are graphic and violent; so, reader, be aware. The ending, when it comes, reverts the mystery to seemingly prosaic issues. I expect something more unusual based on the rest of the book. In addition, I finish unsure if I even understand the reasons why behind the mystery.

This book does get bonus points for featuring a library and librarians who unwittingly become custodian of vital scientific and local history!

About the Book

A lake with mysterious properties. A town haunted by urban legend. Two women whose lives intersect in terrifying ways. Welcome to Soap Lake, a town to rival Twin Peaks and Stephen King’s Castle Rock.

When Abigail agreed to move to Soap Lake, Washington for her husband’s research she expected old growth forests and craft beer, folksy neighbors and the World’s Largest Lava Lamp. Instead, after her husband jets off to Poland for a research trip, she finds herself alone, in a town surrounded by desert, and haunted by its own urban legends.

But when a young boy runs through the desert into Abigail’s arms, her life becomes entwined with his and the questions surrounding his mother Esme’s death. In Abigail’s search for answers she enlists the help of a recovering addict-turned-librarian, a grieving brother, a broken motel owner, and a mentally-shattered conspiracy theorist to unearth Esme’s tragic past, the town’s violent history, and the secret magic locked in the lake her husband was sent there to study.

As she gets closer to the answers, past and present crimes begin to collide, and Abigail finds herself gaining the unwelcome attention of the town’s unofficial mascot, the rubber-suited orchard stalker known as TreeTop, a specter who seems to be lurking in every dark shadow and around every shady corner.

A sweeping, decade-spanning mystery brimming with quirky characters, and puzzle hunt scenarios, Midnight in Soap Lake is a modern day Twin Peaks—a rich, expansive universe that readers will enter and never forget.

About the Author

Matthew Sullivan is the beloved author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, an Indie Next Pick, B&N Discover pick, a GoodReads Choice Award finalist and winner of the Colorado Book Award. He received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. His short stories have been awarded the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editors’ Award for Fiction. His writing has been featured in the New York Times Modern Love column, The Daily Beast, and Shelf Awareness amongst others.

Excerpt

1
Abigail

Something was there.

An animal, Abigail was certain, loping in the sagebrush: a twist of fuzz moving through the desert at the edge of her sight. The morning had already broken a hundred. Her glasses steamed and sunscreen stung her eyes—

Or maybe she hadn’t seen anything.

Yesterday, while walking along this desolate irrigation road, she’d spotted a cow skull between tumbleweeds, straight out of a tattoo parlor, but when she ran toward it, bracing to take a picture to send to Eli across the planet—proof, perhaps, that she ever left the house—she discovered it was just a white plastic grocery bag snagged on a curl of sage bark.

Somehow. Way out here.

The desert was scabby with dark basalt, bristled with the husks of flowers, and nothing was ever there.

When Eli first told her he’d landed a grant to research a rare lake in the Pacific Northwest, Abigail thought ferns and rain, ale and slugs, Sasquatch and wool.

And then they got here, to this desert where no one lived. Not a fern or slug in sight.

This had been the most turbulent year of her life.

Eleven months ago, they met.

Seven months ago, they married.

Six months ago, they moved from her carpeted condo in Denver to this sunbaked town on the shores of Soap Lake, a place where neither knew a soul.

Their honeymoon had lasted almost three months—Eli whistling in his downstairs lab, Abigail unpacking and painting upstairs—and then he kissed her at the airport, piled onto a plane, and moved across the world to work in a different lab, on a different project, at a different lake.

In Poland.

When she remembered him lately, she remembered photographs of him.

The plan had been to text all the time, daily calls, romantic flights to Warsaw, but the reality was that Eli had become too busy to chat and seemed more frazzled than ever. This week had been particularly bad because he’d been off the grid on a research trip, so every call went to voicemail, every text into the Polish abyss. And then at five o’clock this morning, her phone pinged and Abigail shot right out of a drowning sleep to grab it, as if he’d tossed her a life preserver from six thousand miles away.

And this is what he’d had to say:

sorry missed you. so much work & my research all fd up. i’ll call this weekend. xo e

As she was composing a response—her phone the only glow in their dark, empty home—he added a postscript that stabbed her in the heart like an icicle.

P.S. maybe it time since remember using time to figure out self life?

What kind of a sentence was that? And what was a “self life” anyway?

Abigail had called him right away. When he didn’t pick up she went down to the lab he’d set up in their daylight basement. She opened a few of his binders with their charts of Soap Lake, their colorful DNA diagrams, their photos of phosphorescent microbes, as cosmic as images from deep space. She breathed the papery dust of his absence and tried to imagine he’d just stepped out for a minute and would be back in a flash, her clueless brilliant husband, pen between his teeth, hair a smoky eruption, mustard stains on the plaid flannel bathrobe he wore in place of a lab coat.

From one of his gleaming refrigerators, Abigail retrieved a rack of capped glass tubes that contained the Miracle Water and the Miracle Microbes collected from the mineral lake down the hill— she sometimes wondered if her limnologist husband would be more at home on the shores of Loch Ness—and held one until a memory arose, like a visit from a friend: Eli, lifting a water sample up to the window as if he were gazing through a telescope, shaking it so it fizzed and foamed. And then he was gone again.

She hated that she did this. Came down here and caressed his equipment like a creep. Next she’d be smelling his bathrobe, collecting hairs from his brush. It was as if she felt compelled to remind herself that Eli was doing important work and, as the months of distance piled up, that he was even real.

Back when they’d first started dating, Abigail had been the busy one, the one who said yes to her boss too much and had to skim her calendar each time Eli wanted to go to dinner or a movie. Of course her job as an administrative assistant in a title insurance office had never felt like enough, but when she mentioned this restlessness to Eli, finding her path—figure out self life—had suddenly become a centerpiece of their move to Soap Lake. But they got here and nothing had happened. It wasn’t just a switch you flipped.

Abigail slid the tall tube of lake water back into its rack. Only when she let go, the tube somehow missed its slot and plunged to the floor like a bomb.

Kapow!

On the tile between her feet, a blossom of cloudy water and shattered glass.

She stood over the mess, clicking her fingernails against her teeth and imagining microbes squealing on the floor, flopping in the air like miniscule goldfish. She told herself, without conviction, it had been an accident.

And then she stepped over the spill, put the rack back in the fridge and, surprised at the immediacy of her shame, went for a walk in this scorching desert.

It stunned her, how harsh and gorgeous it was.

Loneliness: it felt sometimes like it possessed you.

She hadn’t spoken to anyone in over a month, outside of a few people in the Soap Lake service industry. There was the guy who made her a watery latte at the gas station the other morning, then penised the back of her hand with his finger when he passed it over. And the newspaper carrier, an old woman with white braids and a pink cowgirl hat, who raced through town in a windowless minivan. She told Abigail she was one DUI away from unemployment, but the weekly paper was never late. And the cute pizza delivery dude who was so high he sat in her driveway on his phone for half an hour before coming to the door with her cold cheese pizza, saying, Yes, ma’am. Thanks, ma’am, which was sweet but totally freaked her out. And the lady with the painted boomerang eyebrows in the tampon aisle at the grocery store who gave her unwanted advice on the best lube around for spicing up menopause, to which Abigail guffawed and responded too loudly, “Thanks, but I’m not even goddamned forty!”

At least she’d discovered these maintenance roads: miles and miles of gravel and dirt, no vehicles allowed, running alongside the massive irrigation canals that brought Canadian snowmelt from the Columbia River through the Grand Coulee Dam to the farms spread all over this desert. The water gushed through the main canals, thirty feet wide and twenty feet deep, and soon branched off to other, smaller canals that branched off to orchards and fields and ranches and dairies and soil and seeds and sprouts and leaves and, eventually, yummy vital food: grocery store shelves brimming with apples and milk and pizza-flavored Pringles.

Good soil. Blazing sun. Just add water and food was born.

Almost a trillion gallons a year moved through these canals. T: trillion.

All that water way out here, pouring through land so dry it crackled underfoot.

She halted on the road. Pressed her lank, brown hair behind her ear. Definitely heard something, a faint yip or caw.

She scanned the horizon for the source of the sound and there it was again, a smudge of movement in the wavering heat. Something running away.

A few times out here she’d seen coyote. Lots of quail, the occasional pheasant. Once, in a fallow field close to town, a buck with a missing antler that looked from a distance like a unicorn.

Not running away, the smudge out there. Running toward. She was nowhere near a signal yet her instinct was to touch her phone. She craned around to glimpse the vanishing point of the road behind, gauging how far she’d walked and, if things got bad, how far she’d have to run.

Three miles, minimum. Six miles, tops.

Definitely approaching.

Not something. Someone.

A human. Alone.

Running. A boy.

A little boy. Sprinting.

Abigail froze as their eyes met, and suddenly the boy exploded out of the desert, slamming into her thighs with an oof! He wore yellow pajamas and Cookie Monster slippers covered in prickly burrs.

He clung to her legs so tightly that she almost tipped over. When she registered the crusty blood on his chin and cheeks and encasing his hands like gloves, she felt herself begin to cry, scared-to-sobbing in one second flat.

Deep breath. Shirt wipe.

“Hey! Are you hurt? Look at me. Are you hurt?”

The boy wasn’t crying, but his skin was damp and he was panting hot and wouldn’t let go of her legs. She felt a hummingbird inside of his chest.

She knelt in the gravel and unfolded his arms, turning them over at the wrist. She lifted his shirt and spun him around as best she could. He had some welts and scratches from running through the brush, and the knees of his pj’s were badly scuffed, but he wasn’t cut, not anywhere serious, which meant— The blood belonged to someone else.

Buy Links

HarperCollins: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/midnight-in-soap-lake-matthew-sullivan?variant=43103022350370
BookShop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/397/9781335041791
Barnes & Noble: http://aps.harpercollins.com/hc?isbn=9781335041791&retailer=barnesandnoble
Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=9781335041791&tag=hcg-02-20

Social Links

Author Website: http://matthewjsullivan.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mickmatthew1/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.j.sullivan.77/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5690035.Matthew_J_Sullivan

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The Queens of Crime

2025-04-13T18:33:00.001-04:00

Title: The Queens of Crime

Author: Marie Benedict

Publication Information: St. Martin's Press. 2025. 320 pages.

ISBN: 1250280753 / 978-1250280756

Rating: ★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "None of us is as we appear, I think as I watch the woman enter the marble-trimmed lobby of Brown's Hotel"

Favorite Quote: "Never forget that we women aren't what you call us - witches or crones or madwomen or surplus or nobodies. We are all Queens."

The Detection Club, a collective of mystery authors founded in the 1930s, still exists. The original purpose of the club was for authors to support each other and to promote their genre of writing. This books begins with the founding of the club as the brainchild of author Dorothy L. Sayers. The main characters are some of the club's female founding members - Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy.

The problem that begins the book is a universal one. The male authors looks down upon, frown upon, regard with disdain, ridicule ... add other epithets here ... the female authors. They disregard the women's skills of weaving mysteries and writing compelling stories.

Added to this is the intrigue of an unsolved murder. The victim is a young woman. The case is unsolved, but certain recent happenings haver garnered interest. Even in this regard, the victim - being a woman - is maligned and the cause of death laid perhaps at the door of her own actions.

The women of the Detection Club enter this mystery for a two-fold reason. The first is a selfish one. If they can solve this unsolved case, perhaps they can once and for all establish their own credibility in this arena. As they get more involved, the focus shifts to also obtaining justice for this young woman who has been brutally murdered and whose reputation is attacked even after her death.

It is disconcerting at first to read about the authors as characters. Having read works by at least some of them, part of me looks for the detectives they so expertly bring to life. It is an interesting mind switch to see them as the detectives and in the time and place of 1930s England and France. It is also interesting to see these icons of the genre as actual people facing the challenges of their lives and their gender.

The ending to the mystery of book is a rather prosaic one that feeds into, what I feel, is the overarching theme of the book. It is all about women in a male dominated world - whether in work, play, or life overall. That theme is repeated over and over throughout the book. Many times, the theme is stated or told rather than shown, making the book at times very slow going.

I loved The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict. That book fleshed out and brought to life one main character, a time and place, and all the emotions that entails. This one does not quite accomplish that - perhaps too many characters to develop any one, perhaps a story of a time and place complicated with a murder mystery, and perhaps letting the main point of a male-centric world getting in the way of telling the story of that world.

I am fascinated by the historical finds that the author develops into entire books. I still look forward to see what she tackles next.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Dream Count

2025-04-07T19:45:00.000-04:00

Title: Dream Count

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Publication Information: Knopf. 2025. 416 pages.

ISBN: 0593802721 / 978-0593802724

Rating: ★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "I have always longed to be known, truly known, by another human being."

Favorite Quote: "Something inside you, not the heart. The spirit. The spirit cannot break, even if your heart break. Your spirit stay strong."

I love the opening sentence of this book. That idea is something most, if not all, of us hold dear. To be seen. To be known. To be heard. The unsaid corollary accompanies. We wish to be seen with all our beauty and all our faults, and we wish for that someone to love for all our beauty and our faults. I am excited to get into the book and follow the idea.

I love the idea of the book - interconnected stories of four women, each independent, each strong in her own way, each weak. each part of a sisterhood holding each other up. I am excited to get into the book and learn more about the story of these women.

I love the presumed setting - the COVID-19 pandemic. We have all just lived it. We have experiences the losses, the isolation, and the heroism. I am excited to get into the book and see perhaps my own experiences brought to life.

I love the author's note at the end of the book. "Novels are never really about what they are about. At least for this writer." ... "Stories die and recede from the collective memory merely for not having been told. Or a single version thrives because other versions are silenced. Imaginative retellings matter." I learn that this story for the author is about her mother. I also learn that one woman's story is also inspired by the story of a poor immigrant woman and what she suffered at the hands of those with more power and money and what she suffered at the hands of the system - "a person failed by a country she trusted." I am excited to get into the book and learn more about this history.

Unfortunately, I struggle with the book itself. The dream of being known devolves into the story of the men who did not "see" rather than of the woman herself. In fact, the stories of all the women become much more focused on the men and the power dynamic of those men in society and in these relationships. The story of the pandemic gets somewhat lost as the women's stories traverse their own histories before and after; the time element becomes less relevant to the book. The historical inspiration I learn from the author's note more so than the story itself.

I find myself putting the book down, reluctant to go back. I persevere, but I am sad, for I so wanted and expected to love this book.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

1666

2025-04-02T20:15:00.001-04:00

Title: 1666

Author: Lora Chilton

Publication Information: Sibylline Press. 2024. 224 pages.

ISBN: 1960573950 / 978-1960573957

Rating: ★★★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "The Patawomeck tribe of Virginia was referenced in many early written records starting in the 1600s by explorers Caption John Smith, William Strachey, and Henry Spelman, among others."

Favorite Quote: "He does not understand that no ones own this land; this is for all people to share. He does not understand that he cannot own this land, but he keeps trying."

A note about the publisher: Sibylline Press is a relatively new imprint. Their goal is to "publish the brilliant work of women authors over 50!" 1666 is the first book under the imprint.

A note about the author: Lora Chilton is member of the Patawomeck Tribe. The book is based on research through interviews with tribal elders, colonial documents, and a study of the Patawomeck language.

A note about the book. The book includes indigenous names and the Patawomeck language in tribute to the culture. The book includes a glossary for the terms and names used. Often, the book will provide both terms in the text which is alternatively helpful and redundant.

Now on to the story.

The Patawomeck are a Native American tribe, who call home the area around the Potomac River that is now Stafford County, Virginia. Potomac, in fact, is said to be another spelling of Patawomeck. The tribe's first recorded meeting with the Europeans is dated to 1608 and Captain John Smith. At times, the Europeans and the Patawomeck were allies and trade partners. In 1662, however, a tribe member was arrested. Trial in 1663 judged him not guilty. However, he was murdered on his travel home. In 1665, the colonists forced the tribe to "sell" their remaining land. In 1666, the colonists declared war on several tribes including the Patawomeck.

That is where this book begins.

As an act of war, all the men and even some growing boys are massacred. The babies are taken from their mothers and given to other families. The women, girls, and young children are put on board a ship and sent to Barbados to be sold into slavery. This part of the history is little known. "Every tribe along the East Coast of the New World has experienced similar losses. There are no words to describe the devastation." The current tribe members are descendants of the survivors of the 1666 massacre.

This book is the story of three of these women, one who is merely a girl at the time. The story is told as a first person narrative through the eyes of these women. The first person narration also pays homage to the oral tradition that documents the history of the tribes. The first person narration also portrays the atrocities experiences and the losses in a way that other narrative techniques would not. The details are horrifying! "I do not cry. I have no tears left. There is nothing left."

This book is also a story of courage, resilience, and survival. It is about a journey home. It is the story of the fact that, despite every effort to destroy them, the tribe survives today. An emotional, heart-wrenching story recounting an unforgettable history.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Butterfly Collector

2025-03-27T20:40:00.001-04:00

Title: The Butterfly Collector

Author: Tea Cooper

Publication Information: Harper Muse. 2023. 400 pages.

ISBN: 1400245176 / 978-1400245178

Rating: ★★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "My office, if you please, Miss Binks."

Favorite Quote: "Never can tell what fate will decide."

The Butterfly Collector is and is not about butterflies - monarchs in particular. The book is a moving historical mystery that tells its story in two timelines - late 1800s in Morpeth, Australia and the 1920s in Sydney, Australia.

In the 1800s, there is Theodora, who would spend her time chasing butterflies rather than social connections and potential husbands.

In the 1920s, there is Verity, a reporter who has lost her job to the men returning from war but who then receives an intriguing gift of a dress and an invitation to a masquerade ball. The proposition offered at the ball leads Verity to Morpeth and what transpired there decades earlier.

The book picks up on two completely different and completely unconnected facets of Australian history. The first history is that of the arrival of the monarchs in Australia in the 1870s. It has never been determined exactly how that happened - larvae on board a ship, an adult that happened to land on an incoming vessel, a long flight by the monarch itself, or some human intervention.

The second history is an unsavory one of baby farming. An infant was placed in the care of someone because of the needs of the parents. Some parents could not care for the baby at all; some needed care allowing them to work and provide for their family. The history goes that some of these children were then "adopted" out by these caretakers for monetary gain. as per the author's note, "Sadly, it was a lucrative and flourishing business in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, general in the larger cities."

The fictional story flows back and forth seamlessly between the two time periods once I sort through all the characters and who belongs in which timeline. While I originally chose the book because of the title and cover about butterflies, I invest in both the histories told and the stories woven around the history.

The element of mystery adds to the story. Why is Verity chosen for this task? Where does the dress come from? What exactly is the Treadwell Foundation? How does Theodora's story connect to Verity's?

The setting and the descriptions of the landscape, the river, and the homes add to the story as well, making it a very visual story. This, perhaps, even more than the story itself, will stick with me.

This is the first book I have read by Tea Cooper. I look forward to reading more.

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Let Us Descend

2025-03-24T20:16:00.002-04:00

Title: Let Us Descend

Author: Jesmyn Ward

Publication Information: Scribner. 2023. 320 pages.

ISBN: 198210449X / 978-1982104498

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: ★★★

Opening Sentence: "The first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand."

Favorite Quote: "I am the weapon."

I have loved Jesmyn Ward's fiction and nonfiction work ever since I was introduced to it through a book club reading Men We Reaped. She was born in California, raised in Mississippi, and now is a professor of creative writing at Tulane. She is the winner of the National Book Award in Fiction and of the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. Her books tell compelling, emotional stories. In fiction and nonfiction, Jesmyn Ward contributes to an important conversation and a history that must be remembered.

Several of Jesmyn Ward's prior books tell the story and history of Mississippi - of slavery, of poverty, of racial inequity, of social justice. This book takes that story from the Carolinas to the New Orleans slave market to a plantation in the heart of Louisiana.

This is the story of Annis, who is born to a white slaveholder father and an enslaved Black mother. She is sold to destinations unknown. This book is her perilous and tragic journey.

Yet, this is also the story of endurance and of generations of women who have survived and whose strength descends through the generations. Annis has the memories - the ones she has experienced and those which are passed down through stories and have become equally real. As Annis is ripped from her mother and sold, these memories appears as actual beings that Annis can see and communicate with. It becomes a physical manifestation of her grief and the love that has been mercilessly torn from her. Annis's experiences and her memories of multiple ancestors also emphasize the reminder that this trauma descends down from generation to generation, all the way to the current times.

The repeated lesson of this book is self-reliance, resilience, and the focus on fighting for yourself:

"In this world, you your own weapon."
"I am the weapon."
"Every day I woke, I spared myself."
"Fight for it all."
"You your own weapon... Remember."

Annis's manifestations of those memories and the strength they give her bring an element of spiritual / magical realism to this book. The writing itself gives these elements of the book a poetic quality. At times, that makes the book a challenge to follow and stay immersed in. For me, this lessens the intensity of the book as compared to the Jesmyn Ward's other books. Nevertheless, it tells an important story, and I will likely still always read what she writes next.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Black Angels

2025-03-17T20:29:00.001-04:00

Title: The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis

Author: Maria Smilios

Publication Information: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 2023. 448 pages.

ISBN: 0593544927 / 978-0593544921

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "Every morning Virginia Allen wakes and feels the weight of the hours moving."

Favorite Quote: "They did it because it was their job, because they had committed themselves to saving lives, at the risk of their own. But also because they were Black women, subjects of the Jim Crow labor laws that offered them few options."

In 1951, the cure for tuberculosis was tested successfully at Sea View Hospital in Staten Island. This book is the history of the nurses involved in that endeavor and in the care of the tuberculosis patients at the hospital. From the author's notes: "All the accounts and scenes in the book - including quotes, thoughts, and reactions - are used on oral reports, which have been corroborated by a wealth of material: newspapers, journals, letters, memoirs, marriage and death certificates, draft cards, medical records, autopsy books, nurses' logs and medicine books, hospital publications, yearbooks, previous interviews, and any other material the librarians could dig up."

The "black" angels is a reference to race. Most, if not all, the nurses were black. The why of that has its history in the Jim Crow South. Tuberculosis is a highly contagious disease. Patients were often isolated in dedicated sanitarium hospitals. Caring for these patients brought with the daily risk of exposure and illness. As such, many who had the choice left the jobs to care for these patients, creating a severe nursing shortage. The hospitals turned to the South, advertising jobs that included room, board, training, a nursing license, and a small salary as compensation take on this risky job.

Many young women of color saw this as an escape from the Jim Crow South and as an opportunity to create a better life. This book recounts the history of these women and the world altering research that their work and dedication made possible.

The book is not just about the hospital and the medical advances. It also tells of the life of the women as they faced the challenges of their jobs and the challenges of continued discrimination and hostility even in Staten Island. Ultimately, it is the inspiring lesson of their strength and endurance.

The term "black angels" was supposedly coined by the hospital patients for they saw the color of the skin and they saw the care that these "angels" brought to them.

Virginia Allen, age 93, is the last alive of the black angels. The author conducted extensive interviews with Dr. Allen and learned of others from her to write this book. "Soon, a rich and vibrant history began to unfold, one that placed the nurses at the center of the TB story and set them against a backdrop of larger themes: Jim Crow, the Great Migration, systemic and institutional racism, front-line labor in a public health emergency, disease and the science of vaccines, and the desire to live a free and meaningful life - the impetus for so many of the nurses and the heartbeat of their narrative." An inspiring history.

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The Women

2025-03-03T18:50:00.004-05:00

Title: The Women

Author: Kristin Hannah

Publication Information: St. Martin's Press. 2024. 480 pages.

ISBN: 1250178630 / 978-1250178633

Rating: ★★★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "The walled and gated McGrath estate was a world onto itself, protected and private."

Favorite Quote: "We were the last believers, my generation. We trusted what our parents taught us about myth of equality and justice and honor. I wonder if any generation will ever believe again. People will say it was the war that shattered our lives and laid bare the beautiful lie we'd been taught. And they'd be right. And wrong. There was so much more. It's hard to see clearly when the world is angry and divided and you're being lied to."

I love Kristin Hannah's writing for the focus it brings on strong female characters set in a historical context. Many of her books center around World War II. The Four Winds brought us to the depression era. The Great Alone travelled to Alaska. This book brings us to the Vietnam War.

Vietnam. The very word conjures up images of our nation's history, of those who made the ultimate sacrifice, of those who came home only to find that home had changed, of those who still to this day may receive the honor and services they need as veterans of United States Armed Forces.

Until this book, however, I have not seen much of the history of or read any stories of the women who served in Vietnam. According to a note in the book, "According to the Vietnam Women's Memories Foundation statement, approximately 10,000 American military women were stations in Vietnam during the war." However, the history and even the veteran services now do not highlight the women.

This book tells the story of the women through Frankie McGrath's eyes. She volunteers for the Army Nurse Corp. The book follows Frankie through the events that lead her to volunteer, the tours of duty she serves, her return, and the challenges of her life after the war as a veteran. As with other Kristin Hannah books, the one covers a lot of ground, incorporating a multitude of challenges and issued faced by these women - as women, as soldiers, as survivors, and as veterans.

Through Frankie's eyes, we travel the same path:

"War looked one way for those who saw it from a safe distance. Close up, the view was different."
"You survived a day at a time, however, you could."
"Some things don't bear the weight of words."
"And there it was: remembrance mattered She knew that now; there was no looking away from ware or from the past, no soldiering on through pain.. It started here. Now By speaking up, standing in the sunlight, coming together, demanding honesty and truth. Taking pride. The women had a story to tell, even if the world wasn't ready to hear it, and their story began with three simple words. We were there."

The book is emotional as you might expect. Frankie's voice resonates through the entire story. I find myself looking up the history that authenticates the story told. This book is not a conversation about the right or the wrong of the Vietnam War. It is rather the story of those who served when called upon by their county. "I'm starting to wonder about it myself. But can't they support the warriors and hate the war. Our men are dying every day in service of their country. Doesn't that matter anymore." Frankie is a memorable character telling a memorable story.

To all the warriors... Thank you for your service.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

All the Water in The World

2025-02-27T21:14:00.001-05:00

Title: All the Water in The World

Author: Eiren Caffall

Publication Information: St. Martin's Press. 2025. 304 pages.

ISBN: 1250353521 / 978-1250353528

Rating: ★★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "The Monster in the Water: This is the hypercane, the biggest king of hurricane there could be."

Favorite Quote: "If there was light here, there could be light in other places. If there was power in me, I could spread it. I could let that power glow and make myself a beacon."

There is The World As It Was and The World As It Is. There are memories of what was, and there are the challenges and reality of what is. Nonie and her family are survivors. She, her sister, and her father have survived the storms that drowned New York City and perhaps much of the rest of the world. Nonie has the unique ability to "feel" water. She can sense storms.

They live in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) along with a few others who survived - a family created. The AMNH provides a refuge from the elements, a safe space from the Lost scavenging the city, and a way to try and preserve the treasures of the museum. Per the book description and the author's note, the setting of the museum and the work of Nonie's parents as researchers and curators is an homage to real individuals in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to save historical treasures in times of war and upheaval. If I had not read that note, I don't know that I would make that connection. This book is definitely not historical fiction, but this note did send me in search of that history.

The plot of the book is straight forward. A storm like no other - a hypercane - has arrived. In scientific research, a "hypercane" is a theoretical, extreme tropical storm with enormous destructive power that could form if ocean temperatures get to 50°C (122°F). This is a storm that Nonie does not feel. It just arrives. The storm forces Nonie and her family to flee the AMNH. The goal is to travel up the Hudson River to their mother's childhood home - a farm that may or may not still exist. It is unclear why they feel that the farm survived the storms and provides a safe space, but they do. A dreamed Utopia, perhaps? The dream of safety and peace that every refugee has, perhaps?

The book then tells the story of this precarious journey. As the book description states, "They encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality." This is a book of survival and, in some sense, adventure. As expected, there are helpers along the way and those who would harm. In each encounter is a microcosm of society - communities organized and run in different ways, individuals who follow along with the leaders and those who would follow the voice of their conscience and of humanity.

Flashbacks bring in the past - the people, the places, and the things lost. These memories help to flesh out the main characters and create a greater intensity to the emotions of the book. A post-apocalyptic book of danger and survival can sometimes provide the perfect escape from reality! All the Water in the World is such a book. It helps that I can visualize and put myself in the physical setting of the book. At some point, I think this book would make a good movie. The ending is perhaps too neat a package, but what an adventure getting there.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Good Dirt

2025-02-22T09:50:00.000-05:00

Title: Good Dirt

Author: Charmaine Wilkerson

Publication Information: Ballantine Books. 2025. 368 pages.

ISBN: 0593358368 / 978-0593358368

Rating: ★★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "'Shhh,' her bother says."

Favorite Quote: "What had they done? This was the question that hung in the air above every black family that had ever run into misfortune. And not only. It was a subtext understood by so many women, of any color, who had ever been harmed. It was the question that few dared to ask out loud but many had in mind, with regard to families that struggled to pay the bills. It was the question asked by those who wishes to avoid acknowledging that responsibility might lie elsewhere. What did you do?"

From Connecticut to the South to Africa to Europe and around again, this book tells a circular story centered around one family, one family heirloom, and one act of violence that forever altered them.

At the center of the story is Ebony "Ebby" Freeman. The two defining moments of her life... At age ten, she sees her older brother murdered in a home invasion. At twenty something, she is left standing waiting at the alter as her groom does not show. After being jilted with no explanation, she runs away to France to a friend. Ebby's story is about coming to terms with her past and forging a path forward. "This was the true miracle of life, he thought. Not so much to be born as to bear up under what comes your way. To find a way forward. To embrace what was good."

Surrounding Ebby are her loving parents. The Freemans are the only Black family in an otherwise completely white enclave of Connecticut. They are successful in their careers and affluent. They cherish their children. Because of their son's brutal death, they are even more protective of Ebby.

Anchoring this family is their history, particularly as it is embodied in Old Mo. Old Mo is a stoneware jar that has been in the family for generations. The book intersperses Ebby's story with the stories of those generations and their trials through being ripped from their home to the enslavement of generations to the eventual treacherous journey to freedom. The clay of the jar gives the book its title. "Her dad's mom would like the soil around here. Good dirt, she would say. There is a town, not far away, that is famous for its clay."

The jar is all the more special for its secrets - words engraved in the clay as reading and writing was forbidden for slaves. However, the maker of the jar knew. "... Words also had the power to hold memory." And "Words have power. So does the absence of words. Sometimes, when people choose not to speak, their silence can block out the sun."

This book, like Charmaine Wilkerson's debut Black Cake, covers a lot of ground. Through all the characters and their individual stories, the book delves into this nation's history:

"Most of the trouble in this world boils down to one person not recognizing the worth of another."
"Things are always changing ... It's true, some of the worst things keep repeating themselves, but things do change. And as citizens, we can do our part to keep things moving in the right direction."
"History, too often, has been told from only certain perspectives. This is not good enough. History is a collective phenomenon. It can only be told through a chorus of voices. And that chorus must make room for new voices over time."

Yet, the story winds back again and again to Ebby and her parents, grounding that history through the lives of this family. Another wonderful story by the author.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

Isola

2025-02-12T18:46:00.001-05:00

Title: Isola

Author: Allegra Goodman

Publication Information: The Dial Press. 2025. 368 pages.

ISBN: 0593730089 / 978-0593730089

Rating: ★★★★

Book Source: I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence: "I still dream of birds."

Favorite Quote: "I am done living fearfully."

Historically, Marguerite de La Rocque's date and place of birth are not known. Her date and place of death are not known. However, the story of her life is remembered and has been retold in different ways since the 1500s when she lived to today. This book brings her story to life and does what I loved about historical fiction. It tells a great story, one that has me turning pages. It paints a well-defined character that has me invested in the story. It introduces me to a history I would never otherwise have come across.

The history goes that Marguerite was an heiress who was orphaned early in life. She lived on her estate with a governess and servants. The estate was managed by a relative, Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval. Historians do not agree on the exact relationship - uncle, brother, cousin. This book depicts a cousin. This part of the story depicts the lack of control a woman - any woman regardless of wealth or class - had over her own life at that time. Marguerite is an heiress and yet her wealth is controlled entirely by a male relative, who does not have her best interests at heart. She has servants aplenty, but their actions are controlled by the one who controls their pay, even if he does it with Marguerite's inheritance. He is the one in charge.

At his insistence and under his control, Marguerite accompanies Roberval as he travels to the New World to take on a governing position. On the voyage, Marguerite beings a love story with Roberval's assistant. Displeased, Roberval punishes her by dropping them off to survive on a deserted island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. That is the reference for the book's title. "I leaned over the table to see jagged coasts and islands dimpled all around the waves. Each was called ISOLA." Some say it was the phantom island knowns as the Isle of Demons. Some say their ghosts can still be seen there. Had I not known the historical basis for this book, I would say such an action was far-fetched. The story is all the more compelling for being based in history.

The story continues with survival on the island and life after. The story of life after seems somewhat anticlimactic after the buildup of her childhood and the intensity of the time on the island. It completes the story historically and emphasizes the story of survival but lacks the emotion of the rest of the story.

Overall, the book tells a compelling story of this young woman's fight for survival and of her evolution from a pampered child to a strong survivor. I feel for the young, orphaned child and cheer for the woman who faces her dire circumstances and survives.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

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